Primary 6 spelling words: silent letters

Primary 6 · 28 words · Updated 2026-09-17

1. answer
2. autumn
3. castle
4. climb
5. column
6. debt
7. doubt
8. fasten
9. foreign
10. ghost
11. guard
12. honest
13. knee
14. knife
15. knock
16. lamb
17. listen
18. plumber
19. salmon
20. scissors
21. solemn
22. subtle
23. sword
24. thumb
25. whistle
26. wrestle
27. wrist
28. write

How to practise these words

A silent letter cannot be heard, so listening alone will never produce it, and this is the one list where a child has to hold a picture of the word in their head. Sort the words by their silent letter first: the words that start with a k, the words that end with a b, the words that hide a t, and so on. Once they are grouped, the pattern does most of the teaching, because a child who knows that "knee" and "knife" start the same way will guess "knock" correctly the first time they meet it. A useful trick for the stubborn ones is to say the word wrongly on purpose, pronouncing the silent letter out loud, so that "debt" is said with its b while it is being written. Test the groups separately at first and mix them only when each group is secure.

Where these words come from

Silent letters in English are mostly the fossils of older spellings and of words borrowed from other languages, which is why they have to be learnt rather than worked out. The words here are common examples drawn from public-domain word lists, not from any school's own spelling programme.