18 words · ages 10–11
5th Grade spelling words with definitions
What should a 5th grade child be able to spell?
By the end of 5th grade (ages 10–11), most children can spell words like their, dessert and lose — that is, words built on homophone, confusable. Spelling develops at very different speeds, and a child a year either side of this is ordinary rather than behind.
- homophone
- confusable
Tricky Twins
Words that sound alike and are spelled apart.
- their
- Belonging to them.homophone
- there
- In that place.homophone
- weather
- What the sky and air are doing outside.homophone
- whether
- A word for choosing between two things.homophone
- principal
- The person in charge of a school.homophone
- principle
- A rule you believe in.homophone
- accept
- To take something that is offered.confusable
- except
- Not counting; apart from.confusable
- desert
- A hot dry place with sand.confusable
- dessert
- The sweet course at the end of a meal.confusable
- affect
- To change something.confusable
- effect
- The change that something causes.confusable
- piece
- One part of something bigger.homophone
- peace
- Calm and quiet, with no fighting.homophone
- break
- To smash something into pieces.homophone
- brake
- What slows a bike or a car down.homophone
- loose
- Not tight or firmly fixed.confusable
- lose
- To no longer have something.confusable
Practising 5th grade spelling words at home
Read the word aloud and have your child write it from sound rather than copy it. The Friday test asks for the harder of those two, and only one of them is practice for it.
When a word goes wrong, say what the pattern is rather than just the letters — “that’s a homophone word” gives them something to reuse. Then come back to it tomorrow rather than immediately.
Count a word as learned when it has been spelled correctly on three separate days. That is the rule SpellChirp uses, and it is roughly where a word stops needing to be looked up.
Turn this list into ten minutes a night
SpellChirp reads every word aloud, checks the spelling, and writes these 5th grade words into an adventure story your child chooses — dragons, detectives, deep sea or a dozen more. Free, with no advertising and no account required to start.