5th grade homophones worksheets
Fifth grade homophones are the harder sound-twins: aisle and isle, colonel and kernel, taut and taught. Each sentence gives enough meaning to settle one spelling, and your child picks it. Many of these words turn up in science and social studies books, so knowing which spelling means what helps with reading as well as writing.
Free printable PDF worksheet.
Each print is a different sheet with its own answer key. You don't need to sign up.
Need one more? These are the skills next door at this grade.
The kind of sentences you'll get
Read each sentence. Circle the letter of the word that is spelled right for the meaning.
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Families lined the wooden , casting fishing lines into the ocean.
peer · pier
Answer: pier
- After a week at camp, the shy girl grew and joined every game. bolder · boulder
- A long of shoppers formed outside the bakery before it opened. cue · queue
Every print pulls a new set of sentences at this level, so a make-up test or a second sibling gets a different mix.
What's on a 5th grade sheet
5th grade sheets draw from 60 sentences, 10 to a page. None of these sentences are on 4th grade sheets.
Some of the answers:
islebridalbridlepresenceflaresweetthronechilihoardwrap
- Choose the word. Read each sentence. Circle the letter of the word that is spelled right for the meaning. 10 questions per page.
- Fix it. Write the word in parentheses that fits each sentence. 8 sentences to fix per page.
Every version prints on US Letter or A4, with its answer key on the last page.
How to teach this
Ask your child what the sentence is about before they look at the choices. A rider and a horse point to bridle. A wedding points to bridal. When a pair keeps tripping them up, have them write a short clue beside each spelling, like "an isle is an island" or "a hangar holds planes." After the sheet, pick two sentences and ask why the other spelling fails there. A child who can say "a kernel can't lead soldiers" has the difference for good.
Watch for: Sounding it out can't settle a homophone; both spellings pass the ear test. Only the meaning in the sentence decides. Homophones aren't misspellings of each other: pear and pair are both correct words. The error is putting the right sound in the wrong job.
Common questions about 5th grade homophones
- Which homophones should a 5th grader know?
- Fifth graders should be working on less common pairs like aisle and isle, naval and navel, cymbal and symbol, and straight and strait. The everyday pairs from earlier grades should already be steady. If sea and see or piece and peace still wobble, an earlier grade's sheet is the better place to start.
- Why are homophones still taught in 5th grade?
- Because the pairs get harder and come from school subjects: a strait on a map, a colonel in a history book, a symbol in math. A child who writes "a naval orange" has spelled a real word, just the wrong one, and a spell checker won't catch it.
- Are their, there and they're on this sheet?
- No. Those are grammar words, and they have their own commonly confused words worksheets. This sheet keeps to sound-alike words with clearly different meanings, like hangar and hanger.
Related worksheets
- 4th grade homophones A step easier, same skill
- 5th grade absorbed prefixes (im-, il-, ir-) Same grade, nearby skill
- 5th grade adages and proverbs Same grade, nearby skill
- 5th grade analogies Same grade, nearby skill
- 5th grade connotation and denotation Same grade, nearby skill
- Homophones, all grades The full progression
- All 5th grade English worksheets Every skill at this level
- All 5th grade worksheets Everything at this level
- Homophones list Reference chart · 2nd grade to 5th grade
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Reviewed by the One more sheet team. Content version 240, updated October 2026.
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