Silent Letters and Homophones

Silent letters and homophones reversi memory game

 

Instructions for teachers

Choose the cards below which are most useful/ most suitable for your students, preferably with a range of different silent letters and silent letters in different positions. Cut up the cards with the word with the silent letter and its homophone still attached, so with two boxes on each card.

Give out one pack of cards per group of two to four students and ask them to fold the cards so that the word with a silent letter is on one side and the homophone is on the other, with either side up. The first student should choose one of the cards, pronounce the word that they can see, maybe identify the silent letter if there is one, then spell the word with the same pronunciation on the other side of the card. If two or more options are given, they only need to spell one of those options. They then turn over to check.

If they are correct, the card stays turned over and they can try another, continuing until they make a mistake. The next person can then try the same cards (in the other direction), other cards, or probably a mixture of both, stopping whenever they don’t correctly guess the other side of one of the cards. The winner is the first person to do all the cards in one go, or the person with the longest unbroken stretch of correct guesses during the game.

 

Cards to cut up

Levels 1 and 2

hour	our	knew	new
know	no	knows	nose
muscle	mussel	wear	where
witch	which	why	Y
wood	would	rap	wrap
write	right/ rite	scene	seen

 

Levels 3 and 4

aisle/ isle	I’ll	billed	build
dam	damn	air	heir
him	hymn	knight	night
knot	not	scent	sent
sawed/ soared	sword	we’ll	wheel
weather	whether	hole	whole

 

Level 5

ascent	assent	climbs	climes
colonel	kernel	core	corps
faux	foe	the gnats	the Nats
gnaw	nor	knap	nap
knead/ kneed	need	knit	nit
plum	plumb	pseud	sued
rains/ reins	reigns	wet	whet
way/ weigh	whey	whine	wine
holy	wholly	rec	wreck
rest	wrest	retch	wretch
ring	wring	rote	wrote
rung	wrung	rye	wry