6-Letter Words
Many six-letter words are short root words with an ending added, which makes this list a natural place to study the spelling rules for suffixes. The word site holds 7,064 common examples.
Opens Unscramble Words 4U, our free word-puzzle site, in a new tab. Free, with no sign-up.
What it does
The page sorts the site’s 7,064 common six-letter words by first letter, showing a selection of at most 40 high-frequency words for each letter, each followed by a tile score. JAZZED is the top scorer, worth 32.
Look closely at the B group alone and you will find bigger and bitten (the final consonant doubles before the ending), biting (the e is dropped), and babies, bodies and buried (y changes to i). These are exactly the suffix rules pupils meet in primary spelling, and seeing them in a real list helps them notice that the patterns repeat. The list also contains plenty of two-syllable root words, such as button, bottle and bucket, which are useful for practising syllable division.
How to use it
- Open the list in a new tab.
- Pick a letter heading and read across its six-letter words and scores.
- Look for words ending in -ed, -er, -ing or -ies, and ask what the root word was before the ending was added.
- To find six-letter words from a set of letters, open the unscrambler and pick an exact length of 6 in its More options panel.
More tips
- Words like bitten and button both have double letters, but only one is a root plus a suffix; asking pupils to tell them apart builds real understanding.
- Use the syllable counter to check how many beats each word has before splitting it.
- Contrast pairs such as bitten and biting: both come from bite, yet one doubles the t and the other simply drops the e. Asking why is a quick, rich discussion.
Ideas for the classroom and home learning
- KS2 (7–11)Give pairs one letter group and a three-column table: “doubled”, “dropped e”, “y to i”. They sort every suffixed word they can find and write the root word next to it.
- KS2 (7–11)Play “root detective”: read out a six-letter word from the list (amused, agreed, buried) and pupils race to write the root and the suffix on mini whiteboards.
- KS3 (11–14)Ask students to find words in the list that look as if they have a suffix but don’t (better, bottom, button) and explain how they know.
- KS3 (11–14)Use the list for a spelling-test generator: each pupil picks five words that follow a rule and five that break it, then tests a partner.
Questions
Does the page show all 7,064 words?
No. Each letter displays a selection of at most 40 high-frequency words. The unscrambler and word finder can search the rest.
What do the numbers mean?
Each word’s tile score in a typical word game.
Which six-letter word scores highest?
JAZZED, at 32 points.
Opens Unscramble Words 4U, our free word-puzzle site, in a new tab. Free, with no sign-up.
The list comes from a general word-game dictionary, so preview it before sharing it with pupils.