Pre-A1 Starters Reading & Writing Part 3 — Unscramble the Letters
Reading & Writing Part 3 shows five pictures of objects, each with its name in jumbled letters. Your child unscrambles the letters and writes the word correctly. Every letter needed is already printed on the page.
How Reading & Writing Part 3 works
Your child sees five pictures of objects; next to each one is the object's name with its letters jumbled.
They name the picture first — that tells them what the target word is.
They rearrange the given letters to spell that word.
They write the word, spelt correctly, on the answer line.
Tips for unscrambling and spelling
Teach 'picture first, letters second': name the object, spell it aloud from memory, then check the jumble matches — it turns a puzzle into a copying task.
Cross out each jumbled letter as it gets used; leftover letters mean the spelling is wrong.
Focus spelling practice on Starters nouns with tricky patterns — double letters and vowel pairs like 'ea' and 'oo' cause most slips.
Play anagram games with letter cards or fridge magnets using Starters wordlist objects — it is exactly this task in toy form.
Games that train Part 3
- Spelling Challenge
Builds Starters words letter by letter — the same assemble-the-spelling skill as unscrambling Part 3's jumbled letters.
- Vocabulary Tower
Makes naming the pictured object instant, which is step one of every Part 3 question.
Frequently asked questions
Are the jumbled words in Part 3 random?
No. Each of the five questions shows a picture of an object plus its name with the letters mixed up — every answer is a common noun from the official Starters wordlist. The picture tells your child what the word is; the task is spelling it using the letters provided.
Is there a trick to unscrambling letters quickly?
Name the picture first, then spell that word aloud, then match it against the jumbled letters, crossing each one off as it is used. If letters are left over, the spelling is wrong. This picture-first habit turns Part 3 from a letter puzzle into a simple checking task.
How should we practise spelling for Part 3?
Make anagrams of Starters object words with letter cards or fridge magnets and race to solve them, focusing on words with double letters or tricky vowel pairs. Our free-to-start Spelling Challenge game drills exactly this skill — seeing or hearing a word and building its correct spelling letter by letter.
Last updated: 2026-07-02
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