· 2 min read · Ages 6–10 · Grade 1 through Grade 4
Their, there and they're on one page: homophones practice by grade
"There dog" in a fourth grader's essay isn't a spelling problem. It's a choosing problem, and the cure is choosing correctly a few hundred times.
A fourth grader's essay with "there dog" in it does not have a spelling problem. The child can spell both words. It has a choosing problem, and the only cure I've found is choosing, correctly, a few hundred times, in sentences where the meaning makes the answer clear.
What the sheet looks like
The homophones worksheet prints sentences with one word in question. In the Circle the correct word format the choices sit inline, "We are going (to / too) the park," and the child rings one. In Write the correct word the sentence has a blank and the child fills it. Mixed does both. Difficulty is Easy for first and second grade pairs (to/too, see/sea), Standard for the three-way sets (their/there/they're, its/it's), or Challenge for third and fourth (knight/night, plain/plane). Pages hold 10 to 20 problems with an optional answer key.
Why it works
- The sentence carries the meaning. "Going ___ the park" takes exactly one word, so the child learns to use the sentence to decide, which is the actual skill.
- Circle comes before Write. Recognizing the right word among choices is easier than producing it, and the sheet lets you run the same sets both ways.
- Their, there and they're are drilled as a set of three, not as pairs. Most homophone errors in school writing live in that one set.
Who it suits
Six- and seven-year-olds take Circle on Easy with ten sentences. Nine- and ten-year-olds can do Mixed on Challenge, where plain and plane need the context read properly. The same move, using the rest of the sentence to settle a word, is what the context clues sheet practices with unknown words instead of confusable ones.
Keep the finished sheets. A month later, the ones with mistakes are the only ones worth redoing.