Year 3 and 4 Spelling Words: The Full Statutory List

If your child is in Year 3 or Year 4, their teacher is working through a specific list this year — the year 3 and 4 spelling words set out in the National Curriculum. These 100 words are statutory, so every child in England is expected to know them by the end of Year 4. Some are genuinely tricky. Here’s the full list, why these particular words cause so much trouble, and how to help without turning every evening into a spelling test.

What are the year 3 and 4 spelling words?

The Department for Education sets two statutory word lists for primary school: one for Years 3 and 4, and one for Years 5 and 6. Unlike phonics-based spellings, these words don’t follow one neat pattern. Instead, they’re a mix of words children use often in their writing and words they commonly get wrong.

Teachers can introduce the 100 words in any order across Key Stage 2. As a result, your child’s school might tackle them differently to the school down the road. Because of that, it’s worth keeping the full list at home, so you always know what your child is working towards.

The full year 3 and 4 spelling list

Here is the complete statutory list, taken directly from the National Curriculum’s English Appendix 1, grouped for easier reading:

• accidentally, actually, address, answer, appear, arrive, believe, bicycle, breath, breathe
• build, busy/business, calendar, caught, centre, century, certain, circle, complete, consider
• continue, decide, describe, different, difficult, disappear, early, earth, eight/eighth, enough
• exercise, experience, experiment, extreme, famous, favourite, February, forward(s), fruit, grammar
• group, guard, guide, heard, heart, height, history, imagine, increase, important
• interest, island, knowledge, learn, length, library, material, medicine, mention, minute
• natural, naughty, notice, occasion(ally), often, opposite, ordinary, particular, peculiar, perhaps
• popular, position, possess(ion), possible, potatoes, pressure, probably, promise, purpose, quarter
• question, recent, regular, reign, remember, sentence, separate, special, straight, strange
• strength, suppose, surprise, therefore, though/although, thought, through, various, weight, woman/women

Why these particular words trip children up

None of these words follow one tidy rule. That’s exactly why they end up on the statutory list rather than a phonics worksheet. A few patterns are worth pointing out:

• Silent or unexpected letters. Words like “knowledge”, “guard” and “answer” hide letters that aren’t pronounced clearly.
• Words that sound shorter than they’re spelled. “February” and “different” often lose a syllable when spoken, so children spell what they hear.
• Prefixes and suffixes. “Disappear” and “accidentally” build on rules your child learned earlier in Year 3 and 4.
• Tricky letter strings. “Quarter” and “question” both start with a “qu” sound children often confuse with “kw”.

Because there’s no single shortcut, children need repeated, low-pressure exposure to these specific words. One big rule won’t cover it.

Simple ways to help at home

You don’t need a formal lesson plan. A few minutes here and there works better than one long session, so try these instead:

• Say it as you’d spell it. For “February”, exaggerate every syllable out loud so the hidden letters stick.
• Pick five words a week, not a hundred. A short, rotating list is easier to hold onto than the full set at once.
• Write them by hand. Typing doesn’t anchor spelling the same way handwriting does, even for a quick note.
• Use the word in a sentence they’d actually say. That sticks better than a word learned in isolation.
• Praise the attempt, not just the result. A near-miss still shows they’re applying the rules — that’s progress.

Turn spelling practice into something they actually want to do

Drilling a word list can feel like a chore for both of you. Instead of a flashcard session, some children respond far better when the same words show up inside a story they’re already enjoying, rather than on a worksheet with their name at the top.

That’s the idea behind Inkwood Adventures, our story-based game for ages 7–11. Your child reads and plays their way through an adventure, and spelling and vocabulary practice is built into the story itself, not bolted on as homework. You can play chapter one free and see whether it clicks for your child.

For more ways to build these skills at home, see our guides to fun KS2 spelling games and prefixes and suffixes for KS2.

The bottom line

The year 3 and 4 spelling words aren’t a test to cram for. They’re the words your child will use in their writing for years to come. A little repetition, said out loud and written by hand, will get them there. And if the flashcards aren’t landing, a story-based game can quietly do the same job without the groans at the kitchen table.

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