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Year 4 Spellings
Common Exception Words for Year 4
Exception words are words in which the English spelling code works in an unusual or uncommon way. They are not words for which phonics 'doesn't work', but they may be exceptions to spelling rules, or words which use a particular combination of letters to represent sound patterns in a rare or unique way.
Exception words are also referred to as tricky words or sight words.
Some exception words are used very frequently, which is why children are introduced to them very early on in their phonics learning.
Here is the list of Year 3 & 4 100 words that the children learn when in Year 3 and 4 and are expected to be able to spell by end of the Year 4:
| accident(ally) | disappear | interest | pressure |
| actual(ly) | early | island | probably |
| address | earth | knowledge | promise |
| answer | eight/eighth | learn | purpose |
| appear | enough | length | quarter |
| arrive | exercise | library | question |
| believe | experience | material | recent |
| bicycle | experiment | medicine | regular |
| breath | extreme | mention | reign |
| breathe | famous | minute | remember |
| build | favourite | natural | sentence |
| busy/business | February | naughty | separate |
| calendar | forward(s) | notice | special |
| caught | fruit | occasion(ally) | straight |
| centre | grammar | often | strange |
| century | group | opposite | strength |
| certain | guard | ordinary | suppose |
| circle | guide | particular | surprise |
| complete | heard | peculiar | therefore |
| consider | heart | popular | thought |
| decide | history | position | through |
| describe | imagine | possess(ion) | various |
| different | increase | possible | weight |
| difficult | important | potatoes | woman/women |