Investigating the ‘ee’ sound spelt ‘ie’ or ‘ei’
I can spell words using ‘ie’ or ‘ei’ to make the ‘ee’ sound.
Investigating the ‘ee’ sound spelt ‘ie’ or ‘ei’
I can spell words using ‘ie’ or ‘ei’ to make the ‘ee’ sound.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- There are many ways to spell the ‘ee’ sound. ‘ee’, ‘ea’ and ‘e-e’ are the most common.
- The spellings ‘e’, ‘y’, ‘ey’, ‘ie’ and ‘ei’ are other ways to represent the ‘ee’ phoneme.
- The rule ‘i before e except after c’ can help us choose between ‘ie’ and ‘ei’ when spelling ‘ee’.
- There are exceptions, including ‘protein’, ‘caffeine’ and ‘seize’.
- How to spell the curriculum words: achieve, believe and possess.
Keywords
Exception - a case or situation that does not follow the usual or expected rule or pattern
Phoneme - the smallest unit of sound that can change a word's meaning
Grapheme - the letter or group of letters that represent a sound (the spelling)
Common misconception
When sorting 'ee' spellings, children can assume all the identified graphemes are making the 'ee' sound.
Stretch the 'red herring' words with an identified grapheme that makes a different sound e.g. qu-i-e-t. The same spelling can represent a range of sounds.
Licence
Lesson video
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Starter quiz
6 Questions
ee
e-e
ea
anywhere in a word
in the middle or at the end of a word
'last but one'
often at the beginning or the end of a word
often at the end of a word
often in the middle of a word
Exit quiz
6 Questions
'i before e' words
'except after c' words
exception to the rule words