Primary 4 spelling words: homophones

Primary 4 · 26 words · Updated 2026-09-16

1. their
2. there
3. they're
4. your
5. you're
6. its
7. it's
8. to
9. too
10. two
11. here
12. hear
13. our
14. hour
15. write
16. right
17. weather
18. whether
19. piece
20. peace
21. break
22. brake
23. allowed
24. aloud
25. past
26. passed

How to practise these words

Homophones are two jobs, not one, and they are best kept apart. The first job is the letters: your child should be able to write each word correctly when they are told which one is meant, and that is ordinary spelling practice. The second job is choosing, and no amount of listening will settle it, because the two words sound identical by definition; choosing is learnt from meaning and from sentences. So practise the spelling of each word on its own, then give your child a spoken sentence and ask which of the group belongs in it. A short memory hook helps for the pairs that keep going wrong, such as remembering that "hear" has the word "ear" inside it. Expect the apostrophe pairs to take longest, since "it's" and "its" are the ones adults get wrong too.

Where these words come from

These are the homophone pairs that appear most often in primary marking, drawn from common public-domain word lists rather than from any school's own programme. Each half of a pair is listed as its own word so it can be practised by itself.