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Year 2

The 'er' spellings, including 'er', 'ir' and 'ur'

I can read and spell words containing the three most common representations of the ‘er’ phoneme: 'er', 'ir' and 'ur'.

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New
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Year 2

The 'er' spellings, including 'er', 'ir' and 'ur'

I can read and spell words containing the three most common representations of the ‘er’ phoneme: 'er', 'ir' and 'ur'.

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. er', 'ir' and 'ur' are common representations of the 'er' phoneme.
  2. How to spell the common exception words: some and come.
  3. A mnemonic can help us to remember tricky spellings.

Keywords

  • Digraph - two letters that represent one sound

  • Mnemonic - a word, short poem, or sentence that can help you remember things such as spelling rules

Common misconception

Pupils can think spelling generalisations are always true e.g. 'er' found at the end.

Careful with wording. Say 'ir' and 'ur' are 'often' not 'always' found in the middle. Show a familiar exception to the rule if necessary.


To help you plan your year 2 english lesson on: The 'er' spellings, including 'er', 'ir' and 'ur', download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

You can generate stories to help group words with similar spellings, to support memorisation. The girl wore a skirt and shirt. She liked to whirl and twirl and came first in a race.
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Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

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6 Questions

Q1.
Which of these are a proper noun?
Correct answer: Monday
Correct answer: Scotland
ball
sky
Q2.
Match each word to the number of phonemes it contains.
Correct Answer:better,4
tick

4

Correct Answer:fur,2
tick

2

Correct Answer:birth,3
tick

3

Q3.
Choose two more spellings that can also represent the sound 'er', like in never.
ea
Correct answer: ir
Correct answer: ur
eer
Q4.
Choose the word that rhymes with bird.
Correct answer: third
bid
hid
Q5.
Choose the word that rhymes with 'dirt'.
dent
Correct answer: hurt
hot
Q6.
Which of these words have two syllables?
Correct answer: better
shirt
Correct answer: letter
turn

6 Questions

Q1.
Pick the spelling that matches the sentence. Please __________ here.
Correct answer: come
cum
coom
Q2.
Choose the 'er' spellings that match to the words.
Correct Answer:third,ir
tick

ir

Correct Answer:hamster,er
tick

er

Correct Answer:church,ur
tick

ur

Q3.
Match the grapheme to where they commonly appear in a word.
Correct Answer:er,the end
tick

the end

Correct Answer:ir,the middle
tick

the middle

Q4.
Correct the spelling in bold in the following sentence. She came thurd in the race.
Correct Answer: third
Q5.
Correct the spelling in bold in the following sentence. The cat ran after the berd.
Correct Answer: bird
Q6.
Correct the spelling in bold in the following sentence. The children went to visit the cherch.
Correct Answer: church

Additional material

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