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Have you ever heard of the word Orthography? It means the art of spelling according to established usage. It is a part of language study that deals with letters and their sequence in the word, and it is considered an art.

The reason to talk about it was to connect the word ‘Art’ to the boring process of learning spelling. Combining art with spelling activities is effective not only for struggling learners but for every learner at every level. It stimulates the brain in a way that makes memorizing spelling easier.

So, are you ready to add some spelling art activities in your lesson plan? Be assured that you will have fun along with your students.

Spelling Art Activities

Let me give you some instructions first before we start exploring the amazing world of spelling art.

• Most of these activities require art supplies other than colors such as glue, scissors, etc. And handling these irresponsibly can create great problems. So, make sure your students are old enough to use these tools. Even if they are, keep a close eye when they use it.
• Check the number of words you are using for each activity. Too many words will overwhelm the students and slow down the process eventually. Make sure they properly memorized the words, even if they are just a few.
• Even when the activity only requires writing the word, ask your students to spell them out loud for extra points. This will engage their auditory memory to help to memorize the spelling.
• Don’t forget to review the words taught once in a while. You can use SpellQuiz Vocabulary Test or Spelling Test to check the progress.

Now that you are instructed, here are some spelling art activities to make your class more fun:

Body Words

Body vocabulary words are essential for ESL students as those words are often used in daily life. Yet, often the students forget the words when necessary. Why? Simply because they learned it by memorization. They often struggle to associate the word with a body part.

How can we avoid this hazard? Check out this fun project:

• Draw or print body parts into pieces of paper. Leave space for students to write the name of the body part.
• Divide the class into groups. Ask each group to build a skeleton (for internal organs) or a human body (for external body parts) with pieces of paper.
• Teach them about anatomy beforehand so that they don’t put kidneys on the front side of the body accidentally.
• Encourage your student to discuss among them. This way, their speaking skill will improve and they’ll be familiar with the sound of the newly learned words.

This can be an amazing Halloween activity! Also, you can ask them to build an animal body in the same way or a monster with ‘fangs’, ‘wings’ and ‘Scales’.

Plan a Town

This is the same procedure as learning body words but this gives the students a bit more freedom to get creative.

• Draw or print things that are needed in a town such as hospitals, houses, schools, parks, etc.
• You can ask your students to draw their own elements too in case they want to add different types of trees or architectural styles of building.
• Make sure they write the name of the element on the paper.
• Let your students work in small groups and plan a town. You can make certain elements a must-have in their design.
• Make this a 3d project which would be more fun to work on.

Paint with Words

Are your students complaining about writing the same word over and over again?

It is a boring task, no doubt. But we can’t ignore the importance of practicing in any way, can we?

So, let’s make writing words fun for them! For example, consider you are going to teach your students the names of fruits.

• Draw outlines of different fruits such as apples, oranges, peaches, etc.
• Now ask your student what is the color of a certain fruit. For example, Apple is red, Banana is yellow and orange is, obviously, orange.
• Now tell your students to color the fruits by writing their names in those colors over and over again.
• Let them write horizontally, diagonally, or upside-down to add an artistic touch.

This spelling art activity works for scenery, planets, and animals- almost anything that can be drawn. Students can also use multiple colors to add shade.

Curious about how you can fluently learn and speak another language? Check out our phonetic spelling chart right now!

Rainbow Painting

This is a modified version of the above method.

• Give the students a list of related words such as seasons, house-related words (roof, wall, door, window, etc.).
• Then give them outlines of a rainbow.
• The students need to color the rainbow by writing those words with one of the colors of the rainbow. For example: ‘Wall’ should be blue, ‘Roof’ should be red.

Secret Code

Take the ‘A for Apple, B for Ball’ to the next level. Here is a spelling art project that will improve the visual memory of the learners using this classic method.

• Assign each letter a symbol. The symbol should be of something whose spelling starts with the letter. For example: A= Apple, B= Ball, C= Cat, D= Dog, E= Elephant, and so on.
• Now give this list to the students. They need to properly understand which symbol is assigned to which letter.
• Now use these picture codes instead of letters to write a word and tell the students to guess the word.
• You can also give them words and ask them which symbols will be used.
  For instance: ‘Green’ would be spelled ‘Goat- Rat- Elephant- Elephant- Nine’.

Magic Words

Kids will definitely love this. But how can you be so sure that the elders won’t?

• Write words with white crayons on white paper. You can use boxes or tables.
• Tell your students to color each box with a marker.
• When the words magically appear, first tell the students to speak the spelling first and then the word.

Want to understand the transitional stage? Use our guide transitional stage of spelling development to learn about it now!

Film Review

There’s no way students won’t love this! To be honest, discussing about films are actually an ice-breaker and can make your shiest students speak up enthusiastically. It also helps students improve their vocabulary incredibly.

• Instead of telling students to see a movie when they are home, arrange a movie day in your class.
• Watch a movie together.
• You can turn on the subtitle. This way your students can see the spelling and also improve fast-reading skills.
• After watching the movie, discuss with your students and tell them to write a review.
• Give them a list of topics and words that must be included. For example:

Topic	Words
Genre	Cast
Story	Production
Origin (based on a book/ true events, remake)	Soundtrack
Shooting	Emotion
Opinion	Nomination
Weak points	Visual effects

But you need to do some homework yourself before arranging the movie day

• Watch the movie yourself first and figure out the list of words that are relevant.
• You can give the students some information about the movie beforehand or tell them to research about them.
• Show them some example of good movie reviews.

Act It Out

If you are teaching the students about compound words or finding words within words, this activity will be certainly adding some fun.

• Divide the students into groups of two.
• Give each group a list of compound words.
• One group has to act out each part of the word, the other group has to guess the parts and build them together in a word.

Children with learning disabilities can have a hard time learning to spell. Learn how to help a child with spelling difficulties from our thorough guide.

List of Compound Words

You can find lists of compound words on the internet. Keep your students’ skill level in mind before choosing words. Below is an example for you:

Airline	Armchair	Backpack	Bookshelf
Cargo	Countdown	crossbow	Daydream
Dishwasher	Eardrum	Earthworm	Firearm
Footpath	Grandfather	Goodnight	Headdress
Hometown	Income	Jawbreaker	Jellyfish
Keyboard	Limestone	Matchbox	Motorcycle
Newsprint	Overflow	Passport	Payroll
Ponytail	Rainbow	Riverbank	Seashore
Skylight	Sunflower	Tailbone	Typewriter
Upstairs	Wallpaper	Waterfall	Weekend

Scavenger Hunt

This spelling art activity directly aims to teach spelling and review the spelling skills of the learners.

• Give the students a list of words but this time, some letters would be missing from each word. You can use magnetic letter shapes for this activity.
• Scatter the missing letters around the class and tell the kids to find them to make the words complete.
• The letters of a word should have something in common. For example: put a red dot on every letter of ‘School’. Now if the student finds an S with a blue dot on, they can’t use it.
• You can divide groups or let the whole class play together.

You can combine two or more of these activities to make a long-term project for students. The students will be invested for a long time and might find new words themselves to learn.

Final Thoughts

Are you looking for more fun activities for your class? Check out guide on learning spelling and make your students eager to learn new words.

For beginners, learning to spell new words sounds interesting. But as we proceed, learning becomes monotonous and students starts to get bored. That’s why these spelling art activities are needed. These methods are suitable for all level of learning and even the elder students would enjoy performing them. And not just for class, you can use these activities for teaching your kid at home too.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get started.

There is a ‘hell’ in ‘Hello’, ‘lie’ in ‘Believe’ and ‘if’ in ‘Life’. Sounds like a life lesson, doesn’t it? Well, these are actually tricks to remember the spelling of the trickiest parts of those words. Otherwise, one might spell them ‘Halo’ or ‘Belive’.

The above mentioned trick is one of the most used techniques to teach students the correct spelling of a word.

It is called a spelling mnemonic, a device often used to teach words with irregular spelling.

Does the term sound foreign to you?

It isn’t.

Spelling Mnemonic Definition

So let’s start with the basic. What is Spelling Mnemonic?

Mnemonic is a tool or procedure used for improving memory. It takes information from what the learner already knows and connects those information with the target word or any other content.

Simply put, it helps us learn a new thing and remember it through sentences, images etc.

This way the learner can relate the newly learned content to their familiar things; therefore, becomes familiar with the content faster.

There are multiple techniques of mnemonic including phonetic mnemonics, spelling mnemonics, keywords, acronyms, the ‘Yodai’ method etc.

When to Use Spelling Mnemonics

Consider the word ‘Queue’. It is difficult for children or ESL students to remember the spelling of a word that sounds only like the first letter. That is where the mnemonics come handy.

Spelling Mnemonics are the best for spelling the words that doesn’t follow the traditional spelling rules. Here are some of the cases:

Silent Letter

Words with silent letters are tricky to spell, especially if you’re using phonetic spelling methods. For example:

• Silent-C: Muscle, Scene, Conscious
• Silent-D: Edge, Knowledge, Wednesday
• Silent-G: Reign, Design, High, Gnome
• Silent-K: Knowledge, Knight, Knit
• Silent-T: Often, Listen
• And many more

Double Letters

Some of the words contains double letters that can’t be heard when pronounced such as

• Double-O: Zoo, Book, Spoon
• Double-P: Happy, Disappoint
• Double-E: See, Bee, Eel, Fees, Knee
• Double-S: Assumption, Blossom, Processing

What other words with double letters do you find hard to spell?

Irregular Spelling Patterns

These types of words often sound different than they are spelled. The spelling rules are also invalid in these cases. For example:

	Long e	Short e	Long a
EA	Leaf, Plead	Bread	Earth
EI	Received	Foreign	Reindeer
IE	Achieved, Believe	Friendly
AI	Aid	Gain, Plain

Learning phonetic spelling can help you understand the proper pronunciation. Check out examples of phonetic spelling to accelerate your learning speed.

Common Irregularly spelled words

Cold, Brought, Eyes, Father, Enough, From etc.

Make Your Own Spelling Mnemonics

It is a proven fact that you remember topics better when you have some practical experience them rather than simple memorizing facts. So obviously, the best way to remember a spelling mnemonic is to make one yourself.

The process itself helps you to understand and remember the spelling better. You can make your own strategies, assign words that are easier for you to remember. Here is how you make your own mnemonic:

Sentence Making

• Take the first letter of the word to remember and assign a word
• Repeat it till the end of the word.
• Make a sentence with the assigned words. It is okay if it doesn’t make much sense! The sillier they are, the better.
• You can change the assigned words to make the sentence easier to remember.
• It’s a clever idea to assign the new word to the first letter and make a sentence related to it.

Example

Does: Dad only eats sardines.

Sail: Sail Across Inari Lake

Rhythm: Rhythm Makes Your Two Hips Move

• You can assign a word to a chunk of letters instead of just one.

Example

Friend: FRIday END

Foreign: FOR Eating Ice, Go North

Remember the Tricky Parts

• Find the parts of the word you struggle to remember. Is it the double letters or the silent letter?
• Assign words or items to those letter.

Example

The word Necessary has a Collar and two Sleeves.

The word can accommodate 2 C and 2 M.

Find words inside the bigger word, make sentences to remember them.

Example

Emma faced a dilemma.Spelling Mnemonics: Tricks to Learn Irregularly Spelled Words

Be sure of your measurements.

Here, there, everywhere!

 

Are you curious to find out creative spelling art activities? Check out this guide!

Online Mnemonic Generator

There are a number of online mnemonic generator that will make mnemonics for the word you need to remember. But remember, the mnemonics they generate might be difficult for you to remember. So consider them as ideas to make your own.

Spacefem

Spacefem is an online mnemonic generator where you need to enter the target word and they will assign a word to each of its letter. They won’t generate a functional sentence though.

The Mnemonicizer

They help you make your own mnemonics using the letters of the word you want to learn. They provide a list of words for each letter and you can also add your own.

Popular Mnemonics

You can always use the popular mnemonics that never fails. They are widely used and easy to find on the internet. Here is a list of mnemonics for words that are often misspelled:

• Never believe a lie.
• That liar looks familiar.
• Miss Pell never misspell
• I Got Hairy Toes (-IGHT words such as Light, Might, Bright)
• Have a piece of the pie.
• A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream. (Arithmetic)
• Slaughter is laughter with an S.
• You need to get her and you’ll be together.
• Desert is sandy but dessert is sweetly sweet.
• Can’t Open My Eyes (Come)
• You hear with your ear.
• Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants (Because)
• Your principal is your pal.
• I saw an ad for a dress at this address.
• People Eat Orange Peels Like Elephants (People)
• Right! I Go Home Tonight! (Right)
• I ‘c’ that you want to acquire it.
• Silly Aunts In Dresses (Said)
• Laugh And You Get Happy (Laugh)
• I put the sass in assassin.
• Every New Ostriches Use Green Hat (Enough)
• An island is land surrounded by water.
• There is always a rat in separat
• CIA has special agents.
• Only Cats’ Eyes Are Narrow (Ocean)
• Oh You Lucky Duck (Could, Would, Should)

What other mnemonics do you know that might help to remember a complex word?

Spelling Rhymes to Remember

Rhymes are a fun way to learn spelling and not just kids, even older students love it. Remember the movie ‘Matilda’ where the students learnt spelling ‘Difficulty’ with a rhyme?

Mrs. D, Mrs. I

Mrs. F-F-I

Mrs. C, Mrs. U

Mrs. L-T-Y

Let’s spell another word using this rhyme.

Mrs. M, Mrs. I

Mrs. S-S-I

Mrs. S-S-I

Mrs. P-P-I

Can you guess the word? That’s right.

It’s Mississippi!

Rhyming is a technique that always comes handy in teaching spelling. Students can easily memorize Rhyme Spelling Mnemonics as they are stored by acoustic encoding in their brains.

You can make a rhyme with the letters, or you might make rhymes about the rules too. For example:

I before E

Except after C

Or when sounded A

As in neighbour and weigh

Or

Q and U

Stick like a glue

When -ing comes to play

E runs away

You can also make rhymes with similarly spelled words to remember. That makes it easier for students to remember more words.

The cat ate a rat

And after that

The naughty cat sat

On a big yellow mat

Can you make a rhyme for a word the kids need to learn how to spell? How about you teach your students to make their own rhymes?

Try these fun activities in class to keep your students engaged with the seemingly boring lessons!

Learn more about the stages of spelling development. Check out our thorough guide now!

Spelling Mnemonics for Struggling Spellers

Think about soccer. If you don’t improve your passing skill, no matter which passing technique you use, the result will always be disappointing.

Just like that, spelling mnemonics instructions are mostly based on memory techniques. So you need to improve your child’s memory skill first.

The problem with spelling mnemonic is that it misses the idea of sequential learning. And that is for valid reason as it mainly deals with the words with irregular spelling.

But for children with learning disabilities, who mostly depend on the sequence, patterns and rules, this technique might be overwhelming. They might mix up those rhymes and other instructions which leads to incorrect spelling.

However, if you teach your child the skill of memory first, then they can use the technique without much effort. You can also check your child’s progress with SpellQuiz Spelling Test and find out if they are using the instructions successfully.

But spelling mnemonics can be of special use who struggles to learn with traditional methods, namely memorization. It is helpful to those who face difficulties with specific strategies. Spelling mnemonics give them a different way to approach the words. They can get creative with building their own mnemonics.

Final Thoughts

Always make sure you remember the spelling mnemonics correctly, especially the ones you made yourself.

• Maintain a notebook and write down the mnemonics.
• Print posters of mnemonics and hang them on the wall of your room or classroom.
• Use images of assigned words and the target word.
• Revise them once in a while.

The uses of mnemonics are not only limited to spelling learning. You can use those techniques to teach months of a year, planet names and many more. Try the methods given above to expand your vocabulary along with your students. Use SpellQuiz Vocabulary Test to assess your vocabulary collection.

Happy Spelling!

The ability to represent a word visually is called Spelling. We think about the sounds in a word and represent them with combinations of letters. For years, the only way to learn spelling was to memorize the words from a sheet of paper. But research has found that it is possible for students to retrieve an accurate spelling using compatible methods which are called Spelling Strategies.

If your child is struggling with spelling, or if you want to make sure your child is learning in the most efficient way- this post is the one for you.

Teaching Spelling Strategies

As a teacher, you need to have a clear knowledge on the rules and methods you’re going to teach your students.

Daily Practice

Spelling should be part of your everyday lesson plan. Teach them a few words a day, then make them practice for 2-3 days and then teach them some more.

Phonics for Beginners

When children are learning spelling for the first time, allow them to spell exactly as they hear them. Then tell them to say each sound and use a letter to represent the sound. Repeat the sound multiple times if they are making any mistakes.

For example, they may write ‘Pet’ as P-a-t. Tell them how the word they wrote sound and let them figure out which letter should be changed to make the right word.

Chance to make corrections

Use a medium or way where your students can make corrections easily. For example, ask them to make words with letter blocks. This way, they can add a letter in the middle of a word or remove one.

A few patterns at a time

Teach only one to three patterns in one lesson. Observe your student’s learning speed and plan accordingly. For the beginners, just work on one pattern for at least two days. For advance spellers, you may teach two or three patterns.

You may have to practice one pattern for several days if the child is a weak speller.

Check out some clever spelling tricks to teach your children in this guide .

Few words only

Also, pick 3-5 words for each pattern, not more than that. For giving example, use 2-3, then give them another 1-2 words to guess spelling using that pattern.

• For students with dyslexia or other learning disability, don’t leave words for guessing. Make them each and every word you are using.
• Make sure the words used for example or for exercise are not irregularly spelled.

Reading is Essential

Give your kid books, worksheets or other reading materials. Encourage them to read more. This way, they would see the words more frequently and be able to memorize faster. Also, if they find a word, ask them to spell other similar word that they have learned.

For example, if you see the word ‘Bay’, remind your kid about other similar words that end with ‘ay’ such as ‘Pay’, ‘May’, ‘Clay’, ‘Day’ etc.

 

Here’s a detailed guide on the art of spelling. You’ll find tons of creative ideas to teach spelling to your class.

Test regularly

Once in a while, take tests to see how much they remember. Use sight word, or you may use letter blocks and ask them to build the word you just said.

Also, you can use SpellQuiz Spelling Test to check the progress of your children. With this test, they can evaluate the progress on their own.

Spelling Strategies for Struggling Students

There is no way to tell if a strategy will work for your children. They might even use multiple spelling strategies for different words. You can also teach a word in multiple ways to ensure proper memorization.

While teaching the strategies, you have to ensure that your student doesn’t get overwhelmed. Learning spelling is hard for everyone and harder for the ones with dyslexia or other difficulties.

Here are some Spelling Strategies for weak spellers that also work for others and guarantee proper memorization —

Phonetic

It is the absolute best strategy to start with Phonics. Teach your students segmenting first. Develop their ability to distinguish different sounds of a word.

After they learn to segment, teach them how to represent each sound with letters or combination of letters. This is called phonograms.

For example,

/P/ – /i / – / g/

Pig has two sounds. So it is represented by three phonograms.

Rhyming

Teach your student how changing just a single letter can create a new meaningful word. For example:

Cat, Rat, Bat, Pat etc.

Ask them to make rhymes with similar sounding words or make them yourself to teach them. For example:

“The Cat caught a Rat and a Bat saw That”

Rule-based

Often, there are different spellings for same sound. For example: the sound /k/ can be spelled C, K, CK or QUE etc.

That’s where Spelling Rules come!

Spelling rules will help the child to determine whether to use C or K or CK based on the position of the sound in that word. But before teaching them, research if those rules are actually helpful or else, they will make learning spelling more confusing.

Here are some ideas about which rules to teach your kid.

 

Are you curious about spelling mnemonics? Every everything about spelling mnemonics here along with spelling mnemonics definition.

Silent Letters

It is normal to forget a letter when it is silent in a word. You should teach your child about them beforehand to make spelling easier.

Open and Closed Syllables

Teach the kids about these two types of syllables to enable them spell a wide range of words successfully.

Plural Words

Learning the rules of making words plural actually increases their vocabulary without much effort. Teach them to look for the sounds at the end of the words to determine if it’s plural. This is helpful for phonetic lessons too.

Double Consonant

Teach them when to use double consonant in a word, especially at the end of the word.

Visual

Does the word look right? – is a great question to ask while spelling. Give your students a list of words and make them read and write each word multiple times. After being familiar with how the word looks, ‘Blue’ spelled ‘Blu’ will definitely look wrong, even without spell checkers.

Morphemic

These strategies are more helpful for advanced spellers, especially ESL students to properly grasp the essence of the word.

Morphemes mainly consists of prefix, suffix, base words etc. so basically, it focuses on the meaning of the small parts of the word. For example:

Un — touch — able

Not — to touch—able to be

Words like wisdom or action are pronounced differently from their root words Wise or Act.

• Teach your students about the functions of prefix and suffix in words, abbreviations etc.
• Also teach them about Greek and Latin roots of the words.
• Let them know the meaning of the base word so that they can guess the meaning of an unknown word and spell accordingly.
  For example:

Inter	‘rupt’ (To break or burst)	Ed
E		Ing
Ab		Ly
Cor		Ion
Dis		Ive

Try out phonetic spelling dictionary right now for an effective learning process. Our thorough guide covers it all!

Spelling Pedagogy

Learning spelling is often considered a boring task. Sure, students at first feel genuine interest but soon lose interest due to the monotony. As a teacher, it is up to you to keep your students hooked. Here are some tips to apply in your classroom:

Understanding Your Students

Some of the kids are naturally good at spelling, some might struggle at first and then overcome and some needs help all the time. When teaching the beginners, try to observe their behaviour keenly. This is the time when a kid starts to show signs of learning difficulties.

It is crucial to identify those difficulties earlier. This way, the student would be able to recover faster and won’t be falling behind.

Balance between Traditional and Modern Methods

For ESL students, you may use the traditional method of memorization more. But for kindergarten kids, giving a list of words comes much letter. First, teach them about sounds, syllables and other basic elements.

Give your students a list of word to memorize, but teach them some strategies beforehand. This way, they’ll be more interested to apply what they learnt.

Use worksheets and wordbooks. But before that, teach the kids about the sounds of the words and the spelling of the syllables.

For more fun activities to teach spelling, check out SpellQuiz’s Learning Spelling guide.

Research

You need to have knowledge on the latest spelling strategies. You’ll often hear about some new techniques about learning spelling easily. Inspect each of them before teaching.

Also, explore and make strategies on your own. Note down which words those strategies apply to.

Let them be

For advance learners, let them find patterns on their own. Make them try different methods to learn spelling and ask which one they would like to follow. Remember, expert spellers use a variety of strategies to be able to spell more words. And they keep tracks of their learnings.

You can also assess your vocabulary collection using SpellQuiz Vocabulary Assessment and find out which strategies are working for you and which are not.

There you go! Now you know all the strategies the best spellers use. Use them to teach your struggling spellers or yourself. These spelling strategies have been invented by researchers and are being successfully used by professionals.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and nail that spelling competition!

Every child learns at their own pace, and every child struggles at first to learn spelling. Most students recover after a short period but some fail to do so.

There is no single solution to solve everyone’s difficulty but there are some widely-acknowledged spelling curriculums that can help a struggling learner with spelling words. The curriculums are useful both for classes and home-schooling.

There are also online spelling curriculum that includes many fun activities and pictures to make kids more interested.

Why Do We Need Spelling Curriculum?

Can we spell every word we read?

Probably not!

Everyone can read more than they can spell, especially complex words. Also, don’t we have spell checks these days? Then why bother teaching it, especially the ones with difficulties?

Well, spell checkers can help the users of digital platforms, but how can they be useful for kindergarten kids?

The learners that are struggling at the beginning with pencil and paper, need a proper way to learn spelling; a logical, organized process that will involve not only their spelling memory but other skills too.

And that is where the spelling curriculums come.

So, what are the benefits of spelling curriculums?

Here are some:

• It helps them to see patterns of word making, the letter combinations which aids in learning new words. The students learn about phonograms and rules which enables them to spell a word by hearing.
• It helps with pronunciation. The children learn to identify different sounds in a word and their spellings. Which, in the next stage, helps them to pronounce an unknown word correctly by looking at the spelling only.
• They also learn about prefixes and suffixes which help them guess a possible meaning of an unknown word.
• It’s a proven fact that spelling improves people’s reading ability too. Kids with a learning disorder read more effortlessly if the words are familiar to them. And with the skills learned from the curriculum, they can find patterns in unknown words that’ll make the words look familiar to them.

How To Help Struggling Spellers with Spelling Curriculum?

Hands-on Training

Forget traditional worksheets and a list of words that need to be learned by the next class. Study words, find the similarity and dissimilarities and categorize them.

Rather than telling the children to memorize the words, show them these characteristics.

This will make them see the words from a different angle. They’ll use their analytical abilities along with spelling memory.

Phonograms

Phonograms are a unique way to learn words. Before going to word level, teach them about the phonograms and the spellings. It will help them see the chunks in a word and the spelling will be easier for them.

Speak each phonogram loudly and ask them to speak it after.

This way, the students will be familiar with the sounds first and will be able to distinguish between different sounds.

Spelling rules

Spelling rules are more helpful than visual memorization. They can help to identify similar words and syllables to memorize them faster.

Teach your kid the basic spelling rules, make sure to organize the rules in a logical order to ease the process.

Syllable Spelling

Teach your child to break down the words by syllables. Say the word and ask them how many syllables there are.

Ask them to speak each syllable and its spelling loudly.

You can also ask them to spell the syllables first and then build a word with them.

Take care of the tricky part

Find out which part of a part they find hard to spell. Write that word and mark that part with a different color. This will help them to memorize it visually. Color each syllable different and build a rainbow.

Suffix and Prefix

Explore how many words have the same prefix and suffix. Color those chunks with a similar one. This will help your child recognize the patterns.

Customized Lesson Plan

Rather than lessons based on grades, focus on your kids’ level of development. Your child might be in 3^rd grade but he is likely to struggle if you teach him a traditional curriculum for all 3^rd graders.

Instead, teach him what he can process and then try to improve their skill. It can be frustrating to teach a struggling learner but with proper care, they can make up for their lacking faster.

 

While you’re reading this one, you might be interested in checking some spelling strategies for struggling students.

Underline words

For a struggling speller, the independent writing time might be an absolute nightmare. An easy trick to help them is underlining words. Ask them to underline each word they write, each syllable differently. This will improve their visual memory as well as their spelling memory.

How to Teach Dyslexic Children Spelling?

A person with dyslexia finds it hard to break words into smaller parts to spell them. They also struggle to hear the phonemes in the words. Systematic support might help them learn to read, but spelling remains a life-long problem.

There are some instructions that will help the students learn spelling faster. You should include a variety of activities to make them properly engaged with the learning. You could also try learning spelling using different fun activities you can apply in your classroom.

Direct Learning

Homework has little to no use for dyslexic students. You should teach every rule and idea clearly and repeat it a couple of times to make sure they understood it properly. Make them write every word in class first. If you want to give homework, tell them to write the words they already learned so they can practice them several times.

Read More:

Dealing with Dyslexia: The Ultimate Guide for the Parents

Dyscalculia: Does Your Child Have Trouble with Numbers?

Dysgraphia: When Writing Seems Impossible!

Developmental Coordination Disorder: Not Just regular Clumsiness

Multi-sensory Learning

Dyslexic students suffer from short-term memory weakness; so they’ll have difficulty with memorizing the rules. Your teaching process should involve learning using different senses.

Make them speak the spelling out loud, trace the words with a finger or paint the words with different colors. This way, a greater area of the brain is used and words can be learned faster.

Use letter shapes or blocks to teach a letter. Mix them up and tell them to build a word. This way, they are using multiple senses and memory at the same time.

Spell by Color is a spelling curriculum for struggling spellers that uses color-coding to help the students learn words faster. It lets you go at your own pace to ensure the child isn’t overwhelmed.

Flexible Learning

You should be careful not to teach much. Observe how much the child is able to process in one session and plan your lessons accordingly. After explaining a new word, give them plenty of time for practice. Always keep some extra slots in case you need to divide a session.

Teaching for Neurodiversity is a series of videos made by the British Dyslexia Association that supports teaching dyslexic children at home.

Practice and Practice

No matter what process we follow, the kid will still need lots of practice. It will be a lengthy process and your kid needs to overlearn the words. Tell them to write the words they have learned before again and again.  Reviewing the words regularly will ensure proper memorization.

Use SpellQuiz Spelling Quiz program to assess your kid’s spelling skills. The test is divided into grades from 1 to 12 and above; you can try whichever suits them the most.

Also remember, personalized learning might be the best option for struggling students.

 

Check out this guide on the list of mnemonics. This will surely help you with struggling learners.

Spelling Curriculums for Struggling Spellers

If your child has a problem learning spelling, you will probably look for a spelling curriculum suitable for homeschooling. There are a number of spelling curriculums that can be taught online and has a flexible curriculum to accommodate each student’s need.

You can follow SpellQuiz’s 108 Best Homeschooling Resources Online. This guide comes with a massive collection of homeschooling resources.

Here are some:

Barton Reading and Spelling System

Barton Reading and Spelling System is a well-known teaching program for students with a learning disability. This is an amazing spelling curriculum for dyslexia, where from children to adults, anyone with the difficulty of learning can be benefited from its wide range of programs.

Add phonetic spelling alphabet to your spelling curriculum now. Read more from our blog.

Sequential Spelling

This is an example-based curriculum that involves a lot of practice and keeps track of your progress. It also involves different methods of learning according to each individual’s needs and abilities.

All about spelling

All about spelling is a spelling curriculum that doesn’t focus on what a student learns at a level, rather what a student of that level should know. A 5^th grader might yet have to master short-vowel and the curriculum covers that. It is an ‘Open and Go’ program that hardly requires a teacher beforehand.

Gemm Learning

Gemm Learning has a special spelling curriculum for dyslexia that gives students a clear idea about phonics, spelling rules, and exceptions. They first focus on phonological awareness first before going to spelling rules. It offers students the skill to recognize spelling patterns as they read or listen.

Adaptive Learning from SpellQuiz

Finally, you can always try going for SpellQuiz’s Adaptive Learning program. Here, students can learn and practice spelling at their own pace. As they can practice without feeling any kind of pressure, struggling kids can learn spelling better.

Final Thoughts

For years, learning spelling only involved memorization of words from a list. But this process can be fun too. Modern spelling curriculums include engaging activities for kids and involve analyzing words.

If you are looking for a curriculum for your little learner, make sure that it gives you the opportunity to learn without pressurizing the kid. You can always customize lesson plans and add activities that suit your child the best.

It can be tiring, no doubt, but so much can be accomplished from this process that’ll help the student in the future.

 

Kids’ spelling skill eventually gets better after developing phonemic awareness. They start to guess spelling unknown words on their own. But they might lose interest after a while because of traditional boring methods of learning spelling.

Learning new words should include fun and involving ways for them to grow interest and memorize the words successfully.

How to Learn Spelling

Let’s start with the basic approaches. Kindergarten students should start with spelling two letter words first, then three and more complex words. They also need to learn about syllables and try to make new words with them.

Names

The very first word a kindergartener should start with is their own name.

• Write out their names and ask them to speak their name first and then the spelling.
• Every time a kid is submitting any classwork, ask them to write their name on the paper.
• Display their names on the classroom in charts.
• In home, ask them to write their names on cards and use those to label their things

Useful Words

The words they are learning first should be of everyday use and easy to spell.

For example, Mom, Dad, Yes, No, Stop etc.

• Ask questions and make them answer with the learned questions.
• Ask them to spell the words verbally.
• Let them make sentences with those words.

Also, teach them the definition of the words which will help them to make new sentences and express themselves clearly.

Word Families

Teach your students about simple word families such as ig-family, an-family etc. for words with similar endings. This will make learning spelling easy and fun.

Simple Word Families for Kindergarteners

• an: Man, Pan, Fan, Can etc.
• at: Cat, Bat, Pat, Fat, Rat etc.
• ig: Big, Pig, Fig etc.
• ee: Bee, See, Fee, Tree, Knee, etc.
• ck: Back, Pack etc.
• ad: Bad, Dad, Mad, Sad, Had etc.

Spelling Rules

Learning spelling rules are a mandatory part of learning how to spell. Teach the kids about basic spelling rules which will help them to figure out which letter to put in the gap.

Some Basic Spelling Rules

• Every word has at least one vowel
• Every syllable has one vowel
• Q is always followed by a U.
• Capitalize names
• Capitalize names of places.

Make sets of rules according to difficulty level. After students mastering the first set, go to the next one. Also remember that each child learns at different rate, so some may take longer to master to one set of rules.

This is why students love SpellQuiz Spelling programs where every kid can progress at their own pace.

 

Are you curious about finding new teaching strategies? Check out this guide on teaching spelling strategies here.

Mrs. D, Mrs. I, Mrs. FFI…

I personally recommend the Rhyme from movie ‘Matilda’ where the students learnt spelling ‘Difficulty’ with a rhyme.

Mrs. D, Mrs. I

Mrs. F-F-I

Mrs. C, Mrs. U

Mrs. L-T-Y

Can you make a rhyme for a word the kids need to learn how to spell?

Write, Then Write, Then Write

When learning a new word, make sure the students are writing it multiple times. It will make memorization easier.

• Ask your students to write the words on the board, give them worksheets, and tell them to write the words using different coloured pencils.
• Give them a short list of words, ask them to write the letters by looking at first. Then ask them to write the words from their memory, without looking.

 

Are you looking for a spelling curriculum for struggling spellers? Check out this detailed guide.

Don’t Just Write, READ!

The students should read the words aloud to learn the pronunciation along with the spelling.

• Give them a short list of words
• Give them a short text including the words, read the text together.
• Ask the children to colour or mark the listed words.
• Make small groups and ask them to spell the words aloud.
• Parents should give their kids storybooks, magazines etc. and ask them to circle certain words.

Memorizing Spelling

This traditional method is fun yet effective and engaging for first-time learners. It also improves their visual memory. Give the kindergartener a written word, then ask them to close their eyes and visualize the word letter by letter. Ask them to spell it out loud and check if they are correct.

Revise Once in a While

Along with learning new words, examine how many previous words they remember correctly. Once in a while, hold a session where you revise the old words. Give them activities, ask them to spell the words and write them after.

You can also track their progress using SpellQuiz Spelling tests where quizzes are divided into grades from grade 1 to grade 12 and also available for adults.

Make Learning Spellings fun

Engaging students with practical activities rather than traditional read and write with pen and paper has proved to be more fruitful for spelling learning. These activities not only focuses on children’s spelling memory, but auditory, visual and sensory memory too, which makes learning process more enjoyable.

In addition, the materials needed for these are easy to make.

Flash cards

Write the words on a card and its definition on the back. Show your students or kid the definition first and let him guess the word, and then spell it aloud. You can add pictures to explain the words and make them write the words on the other side

 

Here’s a guide on spelling mnemonics with spelling rhymes to remember. Check it now!

Spelling Train

Give a word to your student and ask to write a word that begins with the last letter of the given word. Then tell them to write a new letter that begins with the last letter of their previously written word and make a word chain. This way, you can evaluate their learning progress.

For example,

Cat > Tree > Egg > Goal > Lion

Letter Shapes

Use letter block, magnetic letter shapes, scrabble pieces etc. and ask the child to make words with them. Kids will feel more engaged and learn the words faster.

• Use alphabet pastas, cookies or cereal for fun.
• Ask them to make a word with these and if they are correct, they may have a bite.

Finger Painting

Kids will learn faster when they are being creative. Write a word with big letters on a paper and ask the kid to trace the word with their fingers. Then ask them to write the words with their fingers using paint.

This fun and unique way will grow their interest in spelling learning and help memorize the words better.

Crosswords

Instead of passive techniques, give your students simple crossword puzzles to find out their progress. This technique also evaluates different types of skills such as reasoning and vocabulary along with spelling. You can make the puzzles into fun shapes which will make it more interesting.

Evaluate Learning Spelling for Kindergarten Kids

You never truly learn something unless you apply your knowledge in practical.

How would you know how many words your child or students have learned?

And how many they still remember?

You should give them activities where they can apply what they have learnt. You can also use English Spelling Quizzes from SpellQuiz. The test starts from grade one. The student will hear words and need to write them in the paper. This test will also evaluate their auditory memory.

There are also other class activities listed below:

Word Search

Word search is an impressive game to learn spelling. Give them a list of words and ask them to find them from the puzzle. They should mark it or cross it off.

This activity will better their visual memory and imagination too. You can make small groups for a bigger list of words.

Hangman

Students love this game!

Use it as a part of your lecture, or play it with your kid at home, children will definitely get excited to score more. For beginners, give them a list of words first to make it easier. You can use the definition of the word as a clue.

Write a Story

For advanced learners, ask them to write a story with their newly learned words instead of a sentence. Their creativity will have a boost in the process. You may assign them a topic too.

For example: ask them to write about a zoo with all the words they have learned. Also, give them specific words to use if you like.

Let Them Make Lists

Write words on cards and ask the students arrange them alphabetically. Not directly connected to spelling skill, this task will help them to recognize the words and visualize the words better.

This task can be given to individual or to a group. You can also use magnetic cards.

Final Thoughts

At first, all the kids find learning spelling fun. They like to play with letters. What we need to do is to keep their interest going on by engaging them more with it. Traditional methods are without a doubt necessary, and adding new activities, learning how to spell becomes a wholesome process for the learners.

Search for fun materials on the internet.

SpellQuiz has a wide range of materials to help your kid learn spelling more words more effectively and faster. Don’t forget to track their progress. Good luck learning!

For example, your child can visit spelling tests to practice spelling using dictations. Then, she could try the vocabulary test to get informed about her current vocabulary level.

Or, she could try playing the Spelling Bee Online — there are plenty of things to do at SpellQuiz.

So, here’s why we need to talk spelling programs — more often than not, parents usually lean towards the “list and let memorize’ method when it comes to teaching the kids how to spell. We usually take a book or any sort of reliable source for words and we “list out” the more important words or words that sound and spell alike.

We’re guilty of the same as well!

Sure a lot of our kids do end up being able to gobble it up and spit it out on the tests. However, a huge chunk of that list just ends up being thrown away in the brain’s garbage dump with the rest of the things our brains deem unnecessary. 

What we’ve understood as parents, trying to implement countless “effective methods” of spelling is that, while trying to make the lesson more effective we’re losing all the fun and simplicity.

Trying to implement rules such as “When two vowels go walking, the first one always does the talking”. There are literally countless words that do not follow this rule than words that do.

This is exactly where a good spelling program can come to your rescue.

A good program and I cannot stress this enough, can save you a truckload of trouble and time.

So, here are some of the best spelling programs we found on our hunt. Hopefully, these online spelling program reviews should help you choose best platform.

6 Best Spelling Programs for Your Kids

All About Spelling

Throughout our search for the best online spelling program that works, there’s a lot of buzz going around about All About Spelling. 

What we like most about the program is that it’s not your typical list, memorize and test curriculum. Instead, their packages are divided into levels and each level builds upon the last one.

This is a great program if your student is just starting out with spelling. In fact, we would highly recommend programs that rely on level-based progression when just starting off. 

It not only gives the kids a strong confidence boost, it also builds a very strong foundation where they can build upon.

To make it even easier to start your journey, All About Spelling offers a nifty placement test. The great thing about this test is that it’s a skill-based test and not a grade-based one so you can place your student right where they belong.

However, despite all its glory, programs similar to All About Spelling do require heavy engagement from the parents/teachers. Most of their lesson plans require both the student and the teacher to work together.

Also, as a cherry on top, if you’re looking for an online spelling program, All About Spelling also has an iPad app that you can easily download from the app store.

Skill-based Placement

Their skill-based placement test is a great way for parents or teachers to identify where to start off with their students. And, starting off with the right foot can make a world of difference when it comes to both teaching and learning experience.

Daily Activities

The worse thing we can do for our students is to make the curriculum boring. It all goes down the drain if the student loses interest with longer practice routines. This is why Spelling You See also does a great job at keeping the routine short and precise.

 

Hey, are you looking for a clever spelling pedagogy? Check out our guide on spelling strategies here.

Training Visual Memory

When it comes to practicing spelling, the sound is not always the best tool. Training the visual memory to identify word patterns can also pay off if given enough time and effort.

The teacher’s Handbook

Do we really need the teacher’s handbook?

Yes! Yes, we do.

There are so many areas of the program where we would have been lost if not for the nifty little handbook they provide. 

 

BJU Press Spelling

The next one on the list is BJU Press Spelling — one of the better spelling programs that follow the traditional workbook-centric approach.

But truth be told, some students really do a lot better with these traditional spelling programs compared to the online counterparts.

Also, these spelling curriculums are also less parent/teacher involvement demanding. If you want to foster independence, BJU Press seems like a perfect option.

This spelling program can do wonders for the working parents with a young child.

This is essentially just a workbook. Students get their word list on day one. They memorize these words and each day they have a small worksheet to fill out using those words. They also have several tests on the workbooks.

However, you may say that BJU Press is outdated.

Kids-these-days love spending time on their devices — introducing them to educational programs could do wonders.

 

Check out this detailed guide on online spelling curriculum for struggling students!

Spelling Power

Another popular spelling program preferred by many parents is — Spelling Power. 

Despite its popularity, we’ve seen many parents struggling with this spelling platform. The spelling program developers failed to provide a clear set of instructions. Also, the methods mentioned in the book could be too overwhelming for the younger children.

We’d suggest to steer clear of this book if you’re looking for spelling programs for elementary students.

Instead, a lot of the parents and teachers tend to break it up and turn it into bite-sized pieces to make it a bit easier on the students.

Apart from a thick book itself, there are a lot of extras that go along with this program. There are DVDs, cards, workbooks, printables and so much more. Fortunately, though, you can get away with just getting the book itself as many parents do.

Spelling practices, in our opinion, can be as simple or as complicated as we make it. 

The great thing about this book is that it only takes 10-15 minutes a day. The key to how to use this book effectively is the placement test really. Once you find out where your child’s skills are at you’re probably good to go.

As we’ve mentioned before, Spelling Power is a pretty thick book and can be a bit overwhelming at first but truth be told, it only covers 5000 words.

In any case, 10-15 minutes a day is really all the time most kids actually need to get through this book.

So the bottom line is, don’t get intimidated by the sheer presence of this book itself. Just give yourself 45 minutes to an hour and things should start to unravel pretty neatly onwards.

 

Interested in learning spellings? Check out this in-depth guide now!

Spelling You See

Next on the list is Spelling You See. It’s also probably the top competitor for All About Spelling.

Like every other long-term skill, proper spelling patterns develop through repetitive practice and experience with time. The goal should be to enable students to spell each word naturally and effortlessly in everyday writing. 

This is where Spelling You See takes the cake. Starting off with level a, all the way up to level g the Spelling You See curriculum really does takes care of everything you need to get started with your students. 

What’s great about Spelling You See is — it focuses heavily in leveled learning. Initially, kids learn about listening, writing, and nursery rhymes. Then, as they grow up, they begin to explore American history and even, ancient human history.

We strongly recommend using Spelling You See for elementary students. You can learn more about this spelling program in our in-depth Spelling You See review.

Spelling Workout

If you’re on the hunt for a straightforward and simple program then Spelling Workout can be the way to go. 

This is probably one of the most easy-to-use simplistic curriculums on this list if not amongst all the others out there. Spelling Workout is also the most inexpensive spelling curriculum on this list.

With this program, you usually get about four pages per lesson and about 20 words per lesson. With your typical fill-in-the-blanks and completing words with suffixes given this program is as simple as it gets.

You may also find a couple of puzzles every now and then in the lessons and that’s about as much interaction or engagement you get with the lessons themselves. However, this did not make it on the list because of its somewhat stale nature. 

This book can be a great alternative for parents or teachers who prefer to have “fewer” engagements with the students. Even for the students who do better on their own.

To keep it short, Spelling Workout is the easy-to-use inexpensive alternative for most of its kind out there.

SpellQuiz

Best spelling program

When it comes to best spelling programs, there’s hardly any other program come even close to SpellQuiz.

The spelling tests in SpellQuiz are designed and developed by linguistic experts coming from the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

Kids can find grade-wise spelling exercises and practice special spelling bee words using dictation. The practice sections are designed in a fashion that a child can develop his/her —

• Spelling skills
• Vocabulary skills
• Listening skills
• Typing (writing) skills

Plus, you can track your child’s progress using the results dashboard. The SpellQuiz results page tracks — mastered and non-mastered words, attempt counts, and other critical metrics.

Easy to interact and work with, SpellQuiz has it all planned and laid out for you. It’s basically as simple as heading over to the website you’re halfway done.

However, if you’re still unsure about where to start, SpellQuiz has gone and made it even easier to start off with their assessment test.

Just head on over to the Vocabulary test section and it tells your where your skills stand on a level from 1-12 to Adult. Just take the test and start where you need to, we all start somewhere right?

But what if you’re bored of just playing with words? 

What if all your brain wants is a little stimulation? Something to get the brain worked up and excited about?

For that, you can participate in online quizzes. Or even better, crank up the excitement with the Spelling Bee Online. Here, you can compete with other spellers in a virtual Spelling Bee competition in real-time.

Final Thoughts

To sum things up, when it comes to finding the right spelling programs, there is no one size fits all. 

Throughout our journey of finding the best, what we’ve really discovered is that it’s really a matter of finding out what works for you and your kid.

Every kid learns at a different pace and in different ways, so if you really are on the hunt for the best, we suggest you go through at least a couple of these programs to find the one that suits your need.

 And the best part about most of these spelling programs is that most of them offer a full refund if you end up deciding not to use them!

Here’s the sad truth — we adults often make the spelling practices so boring that kids lose interest in English spelling in no time. Moreover, kids typically associate spelling with rote memorization. That’s why young ones try to avoid spelling practices — they’re just too scared!

We must find ways to spelling practice sessions more interesting — we need spelling ideas that can create sparks!

I’m sure you’ve searched different online platforms and websites long enough to find a few spelling ideas that your child or student will love. So, here we are with a collection of creative ways to spell words. Hopefully, these ideas will do the trick for you.

10 Spelling Ideas for Our Youngsters!

1. Word Swatter

Our first idea is heavily inspired by fly swatters! Yes, we’d use a fly swatter, and trust me, you two are going to have a lot of fun.

To execute this spelling idea, we’ll need —

• A fly swatter (obviously!)
• 20 to 30 flashcards (based on your preference)

First, you’ll write the words you need to practice for homework. You could even use any custom wordlist. But make sure the spelling difficulty of the word corresponds to your child’s age and expertise.

Then, hang the words in a random fashion on the wall.

Finally, you’ll hand over the fly swatter to your child and speak out the words from the wordlist, one at a time. Your child should hear the word and swat the flashcard that has the word on it.

Young children love this game. You’ll be amazed to see your child’s face gleaming in enthusiasm while playing Word Swatter.

2. Word Rainbows

We’ll know that repetition is the key to master English spelling. We can remember a word far better with spaced repetition. SpellQuiz has a detailed guide on how spaced repetition can help us remember a word better.

We’ll use the same principle here in this spelling idea. However, the direct approach might make things boring, especially for the kids.

So, we’ll use one of the oldest parenting tricks — we’ll fool them!

Rather than asking your child to write a word X times, you should give them crayons or coloring pencils.

Then, tell her that you two will create Word Rainbows!

Basically, she should write a word, let’s say mango, using the violet font color, then using indigo, then blue, and so on.

You get the idea, right?

In this way, could write a word multiple times and practice spelling without even realizing it.

 

Curious to find more about learning how to spell? Check out this in-depth guide NOW!

3. Mini Scrabble Spelling Ideas

As you can guess, this spelling trick takes inspiration from scrabble. You can even call it — add-a-letter game. You’ll first write a letter on paper. Your child would then add another word before or after it. Then, it’d be your turn to add another.

Both of you should be aiming at making a meaningful word.

You should manipulate the letters so that your child can come up with a meaningful word. So, it’s a game of scrabble where your goal would be to lose it!

 

4. Highlight a Word in a Newspaper

 This is one of the common spelling ideas that use vocabulary activities. But we’re using a tweaked version. Here’s the spelling idea — you’ll speak out a word and your child will have to find the word in a newspaper. Then, she should highlight the word with a marker.

Obviously, you should give them simpler words corresponding to their vocabulary size. You could make things interesting by calling it a competition. He who finds 10 words quicker than the other one will win.

Again, you should go slow and let them win more often. This will work as an incentive.

This spelling idea is very beneficial as it fosters the practice of reading newspapers and magazines. And, newspapers and magazines are two of the best resources to build a strong vocabulary.

 

Eager to learn about the best spelling programs of 2021? Here’s a guide! 

5. Arranging Words in Alphabetic Order

This one is pretty straightforward. She will have to arrange the words in a list in alphabetic order. I admit — this sounds like a fairly simpler spelling idea.  

However, often the simpler ideas will bring fascinating results. This will indicate that spelling practices are simple and easy. Plus, they’ll write the words and get more exposure to those words.

We all know that frequent exposure to words helps the child to become a better speller.

It would obviously make them more interested in practicing spelling. You could give them small prizes as incentives too. For example, she could get a sticker for successfully arranging five wordlists in alphabetic order.

 

6. A Letter Is Missing!

While the name of the game has a mysterious vibe, it’s basically a modified version of a simple fill-in-the-blanks!

In a worksheet, you’ll write ten words but each of the words will have a missing letter. Your child’s goal would be to find that letter to complete the spelling of that word.

To make them interested, you could say that she is a police officer investigating a “missing letter’s” case!

The backstory will foster their imagination and motivate them to solve the cases.

 

7. Use an Instant Messenger

Your children obviously feel intrigued watching you using your phone all day long. After all, we all are guilty of being to addicted our smartphones to some degree.

Let’s use our instant messengers to practice spelling.

So, in this spelling idea, you’ll basically have chat with your child. You’ll ask them to write a word and she should write it down on your choice of chatting platform. In this way, she would feel more grown-up and would subconsciously participate in spelling practices.

 

Hey, are you struggling to teach spelling to your weaker students? Check out our guide on spelling strategies for weak students.

 

8. Building Word Skyscrapers

This fun game is almost close to the mini scrabble game that I’ve mentioned earlier on this list. So, in this game, your child will write the words vertically. Plus, the words will lose a letter as ascend vertically.

For example, she should create a skyscraper using the mango in the following manner —

M

MA

MAN

MANG

MANGO

Doesn’t it look like a skyscraper?

 

9. Paint the Word

Does your child love painting? Great! Then, you could use this spelling idea as it is one of the creative ways to write words.

The idea is pretty simple — would paint the words using different colors. She could add different artistic elements too. This idea will foster their creative side and allow them to practice spelling at the same time.

 

Is your dyslexic child suffering with spelling skills? Check out this detailed guide on spelling curriculum for dyslexia.

10. Using Cookie Sheets

Yes, you can use a cookie sheet for spelling practices. The spelling idea goes like this — use different unorthodox elements to write words on a cookie sheet. For example, you could use Jell-O, shaving foam, rice, flour, ketchup, and even cookie batter.

She would use her fingers to form the words using those cooking elements.

 

How to Make the Spelling Sessions Fun?

I know many of you are struggling to find the perfect ways to practice spelling words for homework. Don’t worry, you can design different hands-on spelling activities on your own.

Try to use the activities your child naturally loves to do.

For example, if your child loves playing with LEGO, you can use LEGOs for spelling practices. Similarly, you can use barbie dolls, cars, action figures.

But how?

Think of any toy and try to come up with an imaginary backstory that has something to do with spelling. For example, you could say that barbie was kidnapped by an evil witch. To break her free, your child will have to spell five words correctly out of ten.

This might work like a magic.

Then, let’s imagine your child has a Superman action figure. You could say that Superman must fight a villain called Martian Spelling Snake! Try to make silly names as he might find it funny and become more interested.

Now, tell him that Martian Spelling Snake has kryptonite and Superman is in his captivity. But there is a way! If your child can win a spelling contest against the Martian Spelling Snake, the villain will lose.

Remember, your imagination is your best friend.

It doesn’t matter whether your story is believable or not. They don’t care — just try to make things interesting and work on your storytelling efforts.

 

Spelling Ideas for Older Children

I think you’ve already noticed that all the spelling ideas are only suitable for Pre-K to a first-grader. While these ideas will work like a charm for them, the older children (let’s say a sixth-grader) will never find them interesting.

So, how could help them with spelling?

As they are older, you should stick to the traditional approaches. You can’t fool them to practice spelling. In this case, a dictation-based spelling exercise could help a lot.

SpellQuiz offers the perfect tools in this case. He or she could participate in the spelling tests and exercises on SpellQuiz. The spelling modules are straightforward and designed by experts.

Also, you could track their progress and later can work on the words they’re struggling with.

In recent times, Spelling You See has become quite a popular option for developing spelling skills, especially for the young ones. The unorthodox approach of teaching spelling has been the strongest feature of this learning platform.

While most other spelling training platforms focus heavily on the spelling exercises and tests, Spelling You See completely ditches them. Even you’ll not find any kind of word lists on their curriculum. Rather, they prioritize on the natural language development approach.

Obviously, we’re all very curious about this unique way of teaching spelling to the kids.

So, today, we’ll conduct a complete Spelling You See review as we would share our experience of going through their curriculum. Hopefully, this detailed review would help you make a concrete decision regarding whether you should take their service or not.

Finally, we’ll conduct a head-to-head comprehensive analysis between Spelling You See and SpellQuiz. The comparison should give a clearer idea about the distinctions between these two spelling platforms.

 

Core Educational Philosophy of Spelling You See

Spelling You See uses its proprietary teaching method that is based on the five developmental stages of spelling. They believe that all students essentially follow a sequence of stages when they’re learning to spell. Also, one can only become a good speller by following this hard and fast sequence of learning.

Spelling You See has divided the sequence into five stages —

1. Preliterate
2. Phonetic
3. Skill Development
4. Word Extension
5. Derivational Constancy

The method also suggests that the learning pace would from student t student. Also, skipping or speeding up any of the stages would disrupt the quality of learning.  

This whole concept is developed by Dr. Karen Holinga, the creator of Spelling You See. Dr. Holinga has a vast 30 years of experience as an elementary school teacher and a college professor.

Now, the question is — how can we implement these five stages of spelling? What spelling activities should we use?

Spelling You See has divided the overall journey into 7 levels —

• Listen and Write
• Jack and Jill
• Wild tales
• Americana
• American Spirit
• Ancient Achievements
• Modern Milestones

As you can guess, Spelling You See uses these seven levels as the pillars of the curriculum. Also, the seven levels correspond to the five developmental stages that we’ve mentioned before.

So, Spelling You See doesn’t follow the typical grade-based spelling curriculum. Whether this approach of spelling would help a regular school-goer or not — that is still up for debate. However, we think that this strategy might do wonders for the homeschooled kids.

Let’s take a look at the breakdown of the seven levels of spelling training.

 

Spelling You See Review: Seven Levels of Spelling

The seven levels indicate the proprietary curriculum sequence of Spelling You See. If a child is only starting her spelling lessons and training, she should start from the beginning.

Also, she shouldn’t skip ahead any level. Otherwise, it would hamper the five stages of learning spelling.

But you might ask, how could I be sure of my student’s appropriate spelling level?

You could follow the Readiness Guidelines by Spelling You See. These guidelines should help you determine the current spelling level of your student.

Also, Spelling You See provides all the tools you need to conduct the spelling lessons corresponding to the spelling levels.

For example, you’ll get an instructor’s handbook and a student pack. The Universal Set includes the detailed guideline for conducting all lessons (36 in the Listen and Write level), additional information, and resources.

But what would kids learn in the spelling levels?

Let’s dive into that.

 

Listen and Write

As you know, the first two stages of spelling are — Preliterate and Phonetic, according to Spelling You See. The ultimate goal of Listen and Write level is to help a student reach the Phonetic stage from the Preliterate stage.  

To do so, this level focuses heavily on building the foundation so that the child can gain confidence and become competent spellers.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Lowercase letter formation
• Knowledge about consonants and vowels
• Introduction to smaller three-letter words
• Eventually teaching four- or even five-letter words

Kids will also get daily worksheets so that they learn in an organized fashion. Plus, the package also includes stickers. You should award the stickers so that they feel motivated to continue their spelling training.

 

Are you looking for creative spelling ideas? Here’s guide with a large collection of unique spelling ideas. 

 

Jack and Jill

Aren’t we all familiar with the rhyme — Jack and Jill, went up the hill …? As you can guess, this level heavily focuses on nursery rhymes and wordplays.

The ultimate goal is to offer exposure to more words, as well as, help them master those words.

Spelling You See claims that this learning level would help a student with the transition from the Phonetic stage to the Skill Development stage.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Nursery rhymes
• Using rhymes to get introduced to new words in an engaging way
• The ability to distinguish different yet similar sounds

Spelling You See provides all the rhymes for practice in this level. These nursery rhymes are carefully curated to bring out maximum results.

Kids will also participate in dictations in this stage. The level should help a child with letter patterns too.

 

Wild Tales

Just like the previous level, Wild Tales also focus on skill development. However, instead of using nursery rhymes, this level uses stories, mostly nonfiction texts about different animals.

The ultimate goal of this stage is to foster curiosity about animals. While the kids learn about different animals, they’re basically practicing spelling passively.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Learn about different animals by reading nonfiction texts.
• Improve their reading skill with the help of a guided reading approach.
• Get familiarized with common letter chunks (-ght, -tion, etc.).
• Continue learning through dictation.

Want to find clever ideas on learning spelling for kindergarten students? Check out this in-depth guide now!

Americana

Americana continues the previous efforts of the Skill Development stage. As you can guess, Americana focuses on teaching American culture and history. Spelling You See uses many contextual nonfiction texts.

This level is quite similar to Wild Tales but the reading difficulty is slightly higher. Also, the difficulty level continues to increase as students go through this level.

Spelling You See also focuses on vocabulary development in the Americana level.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Learn about American history and culture through nonfiction texts.
• Participate in various spelling activities, including — chunking, copy work, and dictation.
• Become a better reader as the reading difficulty increases.

 

American Spirit

American Spirit is basically a continuation of the Americana level. This level too focuses on nonfiction texts about American history. However, rather than focusing on cultural values and customs, American Spirit is all about influential figures, like George Washington and Neil Armstrong.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Learn about historical figures in American history through nonfiction texts.
• Continue participating in various spelling activities, including — chunking, copy work, and dictation.
• Become a better reader as the reading difficulty increases.

 

Ancient Achievements

As the students are becoming competent in Skill Development, it’s time to work on their Word Extension skills. So, Ancient Achievements work as the bridge between Skill Development and Word Extension stage, according to the spelling stages of Spelling You See.

Ancient Achievements focus on human history rather than American history. Kids will learn about cave paintings, Marco Polo, Vikings, etc. This will expand their boundary of knowledge and help them to have a broader view of the world.

As you can guess, the lessons are harder than the previous levels.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Learn about ancient human history through nonfiction texts.
• Continue to learn spelling through chunking, copy work, and dictation.
• Learn about interesting facts of different words
• Become a better reader as the reading difficulty increases.

 

Modern Milestones

As the name suggests, Modern Milestones is all about the recent achievements of human history and the creators behind these achievements. More specifically, students will learn about the contributions of great human beings during the last four centuries.

This level is significantly harder than the previous ones. Students will learn about the various spelling patterns, including the base words, prefixes, and suffixes. This is the final level of spelling training from Spelling You See.

What will your child learn in this stage?

• Learn about modern human history, specifically about musicians, scientists, artists, and other influencers.
• Understand word patterns, prefixes, and suffixes
• Continue learning through copy work and dictations

 

Shortcomings of Spelling You See

Despite having a great spelling training program, Spelling You See is not free from various degrees of shortcomings. You should check them out before making your purchase decision.

After all, Spelling You See is a premium training program.

 

Only Includes Offline Lessons

Spelling You See is NOT an online learning platform but a publisher that provides offline learning tools and additional accessories. In fact, you’re only getting different books, worksheets, and supporting elements for the lessons.

So, if you’re looking for an online learning platform you should check other resources.

 

Focused Only Towards the USA-Based Students

Spelling You See has designed its curriculum focused only on US-based students. For example, the Americana and American Spirits are only teaching about the culture and history of the United States of America.

Kids from Canada, the UK, or Australia won’t have the resources to learn about their culture and history.

 

Doesn’t Focus on Typical Spelling Tests

While Spelling You See proudly says that their method doesn’t include spelling tests and word lists, you can say that it is a major shortcoming of this curriculum.

For example, if a third-grader needs help with the spelling tests and exercises, she can’t get much help from this unorthodox spelling curriculum.

After all, most students still follow the traditional structured learning path and go to a school.

 

Doesn’t Meet the Needs of an Older Student

Spelling You See might be a great tool for a pre-K or a fifth-grader, but the curriculum is obsolete for a tenth-grader. In fact, even a sixth or seventh grader can’t get much help from these books.

So, Spelling You See is clearly not suitable for all grade levels.

 

Are you looking for other spelling programs for elementary students, just like Spelling You See? Follow this guide. 

 

SpellQuiz vs. Spelling You See: Direct Comparison

You can say that SpellQuiz follows a completely opposite approach to spelling training. First of all, while Spelling You See focuses on teaching a child how to spell, SpellQuiz serves as a robust platform for practicing.

In some ways, you can even say that SpellQuiz is a supplementary platform for Spelling You See. A preschooler can learn how to spell from Spelling You See and then can participate in the spelling exercises and tests.

Also, SpellQuiz is the answer to all of the shortcomings of Spelling You See.

Think about it —

• SpellQuiz is a completely online-oriented spelling and vocabulary building platform.
• The lessons at SpellQuiz are suitable for students coming from any country.
• SpellQuiz is one of the most resourceful platforms that can help students with spelling tests in their schools.
• Students of all ages and even adults can find suitable spelling lessons and training materials at SpellQuiz.

Moreover, SpellQuiz has a Spelling Bee Online game where anyone from anywhere can participate in a virtual spelling bee and compete globally. Plus, this game is completely free making it accessible for everyone.

Then, the Adaptive Learning allows the children to learn spelling at their own pace. You can also take part in quizzes, learn about idioms, read resourceful blogs and guides.

Overall, SpellQuiz offers much more compared to Spelling You See. It’s true that the books from Spelling You See are quite resourceful for young children. But that’s all you’re going to get from Spelling You See — the platform doesn’t offer anything else!

Spelling Classroom is one of the most popular destinations for the parents and teachers for spelling and vocabulary practices, especially in the USA. The kid-friendly interface and the wide variety of games and activities are the core reasons behind the popularity of this learning platform.

However, as Spelling Classroom is a premium platform without any freemium features, you need to have a detailed idea before spending.

As you can guess from the title, we’re going to make a detailed Spelling Classroom review today. Furthermore, as SpellQuiz and Spelling Classroom both serve as spelling and vocabulary building platforms, we’re going to do a head-to-head comparison too. Hopefully, the comparison will help you choose the best platform for your child or students.

The article is divided into the following sections so that you can easily navigate through the review parameters more conveniently.

• What is Spelling Classroom?
• Spelling Classroom Review: Using Spelling Classroom Firsthand
• Scopes of improvisation for Spelling Classroom
• Best alternatives to Spelling Classroom (paid and free)
• SpellQuiz vs. Spelling Classroom: a direct comparison

 

What Is Spelling Classroom? A Brief Introduction

Spelling Classroom is an online educational platform for K-12 students that specializes in — spelling and vocabulary. Spelling Classroom features a gamified environment where students can learn through 31 interactive modules. These learning modules include games like hangman (Hang a Bot) and crossword puzzles.

The platform has over 2,600 premade wordlists, you can make custom lists too. Apart from the spelling and vocabulary learning modules, Spelling Classroom has a plethora of reward games, printables for offline learning, and sentence and paragraph writing segments.

Different segments and learning modules are able to teach over 50,000 words. As most native speakers have an average vocabulary size of 20,000 words, the word bank of over 50,000 words seems adequate enough.

As for subscription pricing, you can either go for family packages or classroom packages.

A family package costs from $49.98/year to $62.48/year based on the number of students. The family package supports up to 5 students.

The classroom packages, on the other hand, cost from $99.98/year to $272.98 based on the number of students. You can have 25 to 100 students learning with Spelling Classroom in the classroom packages.

Now, you should also remember that Spelling Classroom is not a freemium platform. Meaning, none of the features are available for free. But you can try out the demo or unlock all the premium features for free for 14 days.

All in all, Spelling Classroom seems like a great platform for improving the spelling skills and enrich the vocabulary of your students. However, we know that a mere overview doesn’t offer much help while deciding whether you should go for a premium subscription or not.

We need to dive deep into this spelling classroom review and see how does it feel to use Spelling Classroom firsthand.

 

Are you looking for creative ways to spell words? Here’s guide with a large collection of unique spelling ideas. 

Spelling Classroom Review: Using Spelling Classroom Firsthand

A Teacher or Parent Creates the Main Account

Once you sign up and log in, the homepage immediately changes with numerous new menu options added on the top menu bar. The platform asks you to add students as you’ll be operating the platform as a teacher or a parent.

This what the homepage for a teacher looks like —

 

How Do Things Start for a Student?

After you have created accounts for your students, they will have to log in to get access to the activities. As your student logs in, she will see the following screen —

The student will first create a Buddy or an online avatar to get started with the activities. They can choose physical attributes, clothes, and even a cute pet from the given option. Here’s an example —

Then, the student should head over to the spelling list, she can either pick a pre-made list from them or you (the teacher) can create one for them. After picking a list, she will find a new window where she could participate in any spelling lesson, vocabulary lesson, or handwriting section.

All of the lessons have a gamified environment. Meaning, these lessons start in the same way a video game starts. Such an approach might motivate her to participate in the games.

 

How Does the First Module Feel Like?

For example, the first game, Spelling Mission, begins in the cockpit of a spacecraft and tells that student has found a new planet. Then, the screen automatically shows someone landing on a planet and exploring different English words.

However, in reality, the module only presents them with fifteen new words from the list. The student doesn’t have to do anything but listen to the words, their spellings, and usage in a sentence.

Here’s how it looks like —

Although there’s an issue with the first game. Despite the interesting approach, a student doesn’t have to do anything but listen. In a real game, on the other hand, a player has to do something, like — pressing certain buttons or navigate with a mouse pointer.

In Spelling Mission, the player has nothing to do but listen. This can be a bit confusing. We have seen students getting confused in actual practice asking us what to do here. They could have given instructions for clarification.

 

Fun or Confusing?

As we moved on to the next game, the student felt more comfortable. Being a third-grader, she was well-acquainted with the fundamentals of some video games. That’s why she enjoyed Space Speller very, very much.

She loved hovering in a spaceship and collecting the letters to form a particular word. We loved how her face glowed with happiness and fun.

After finishing this game, she instantly jumped over to the next one — Lost Temple. She loved how this new game looked like. However, she again rushed to us asking for help. The target of the game was to find the word chests and avoid Yeti monsters — the instruction seemed simple.

However, the gameplay was clunky and confusing. The player control mechanic seemed too complicated for her. Even we needed a few try to fully understand how to control the player. Also, we failed to navigate properly and find the chests without losing all our lives.

You should know that we’re millennials with a knack for video games. Even we thought the game was too hard!

Want to find smart ideas on how to learn spelling? Check out this detailed guide.

What About the Tests?

You should know that Spelling Classroom is not only a place for lessons and games. Your student could take part in spelling and vocabulary tests too. Basically, the lessons and games repeat the same words from a list so that students get to practice the words through spaced repetition.

The spelling test is pretty straightforward. You will hear a word and it being used in a sentence. The goal is to write it down on the textbox without making any spelling mistakes. This is exactly the same as the spelling test on SpellQuiz.

Your student must get 70% marks to pass the test.

For the vocabulary test, the students get definitions of words and they will have to choose the correct word from the six given options. This section also has a cut-off mark of 70%.

 

Let’s Play Some Real Games

The games in the previous section were designed to teach spelling and vocabulary. But Spelling Classroom has a huge collection of real games too that your students can play for fun. Completing the lessons helps them earn coins that they can use to play these games.

The coins are great incentives for them to partake in more spelling and vocabulary lessons. A student can only play 45 minutes every day and every game session demand one coin. This almost works like the old-school arcade games that required real-life coins.

The games are extremely fun and our students loved playing them.

 

What Do the Reports Say?

A good online platform must offer a robust report or analytics section. This helps the teachers to evaluate their teaching efforts improvise and optimize them.

Spelling Classroom does include a reports page but we didn’t feel it to be sufficient enough.

For example, you can only check the misspelled or non-mastered words besides the activity modules. You need to check the session durations, correct words, attempt counts, etc. to fully evaluate your teaching approaches.

Spelling Classroom fails to offer such crucial evaluation factors. And, this is the end of the firsthand experience of using the platform in today’s Spelling Classroom review. Let’s talk about the scopes of improvement now.

 

Check out this guide to find about the best spelling programs of 2021!

 

Scopes of Improvement for Spelling Classroom

There are a few issues with Spelling Classroom that we noticed while the review process. If the developers behind this impressive platform can work on them, the website will even become more beneficial to the students.

Here are scopes of improvement —

 

Not Suitable for Children of All Age Groups

While the interesting games will do wonders for the young children, older children might find them too children. For example, A fifth or sixth-grader might not enjoy collecting letters to form words, let alone the older ones. So, a large portion of the learning activities become obsolete for them.  

While the activities make perfect sense for K-3 students, older kids will not get the maximum benefit. They might even straight-up refuse to partake in such activities.

 

The UI Is Too Complicated for the K-3 Students

While the spelling activities are great for K-3 students, the UI might be too complicated for them. Even many teachers have shared their concerns regarding this issue. The teachers get confused using the UI, too.

So, Spelling Classroom should make the UI more intuitive so that their target audience can get a better user experience.

 

Poor Reports and Analytics

As we have mentioned earlier, the reports page of Spelling Classroom should get some improvements. The duration of practice sessions and the correct and incorrect spelling ratio are crucial for the teachers to improvise their teaching efforts.  

 

No Freemium Features

 While the existing features of Spelling Classroom are top-notch, they don’t offer any kind of freemium services. You could go for a free trial for 14 days, but you can’t use any of their teaching modules for free.

This could be an issue for those who are struggling with budget.   

 

Best Alternatives to Spelling Classroom

While Spelling Classroom is a great teaching platform, there are certain online platforms that you could use as great alternatives.

These are —

 

ABCmouse

ABCmouse is one of the biggest online educational platforms that boasts of having a massive collection of educational activities. Compared to the 31 learning activities, ABCmouse has over 10,000 learning activities with 850 lesson plans.

ABCmouse also shares the same teaching approach. The lessons start with the creation of an online avatar and then students go through the learning path.

You can learn more about ABC mouse from this detailed ABCmouse review.  

 

Spelling Stars

Spelling Stars is another learning platform that specializes in spelling and vocabulary. It’s true that Spelling Stars has fewer games on its platform. But the quality of the spelling lists and the teaching method is superb there.

 

Spelling City

Vocabulary Spelling City of Spelling City is another prominent name among online educational platforms. It too offers a large collection of word games, like Silly Bulls for teaching syllables or Word Unscramble. There are a total of 40 spelling games on Spelling City.

You should check out this SpellingCity review to learn every detail about this website.

 

Spelling Classroom vs SpellQuiz: Direct Comparison

Let’s see how SpellQuiz fares against the features and offerings from Spelling Classroom.

 

Suitable for Kids of All Grades

SpellQuiz has a more straightforward approach in terms of spelling quizzes, lessons, and tests. The spelling test module features a state-of-the-art dictation-based teaching approach. So, older kids can become more comfortable using them. The lessons are designed by linguistic experts from the USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia.

 

Online Spelling Bee Multiplayer Game

Rather than using kindergarten-focused cartoon games, students can take part in Spelling Bee Online. This is a multiplayer game where you play Spelling Bee against participants coming from all around the world in real-time. Also, the leaderboard gets updated in real-time too.

So, good spellers can showcase their spelling prowess which is more challenging and exciting. The best part is the SBO is a completely free-to-play game. Anyone can join from anywhere, anytime!

 

State-of-the-Art Vocabulary Test an Adaptive Learning

Before jumping onto any kind of learning program, the students should assess their current capabilities. Although Spelling Classroom says that their platform is adaptive, they don’t offer any kind of preliminary assessment tool.

SpellQuiz, on the other hand, features a vocabulary assessment test. This vocabulary assessment tool will analyze your capabilities within 10 minutes and offer you a suggestive vocabulary size and equivalent grade level. It will help you customize your learning approach.

Furthermore, you can choose the Adaptive Learning module to learn at your own speed.

 

Wide Collection of Word Lists, Quizzes, and Idioms

SpellQuiz has a separate Words module that will help you master new words. The module is divided into grade levels so that students can go through all the words from one place.

If students feel burnt out from all the spelling lessons, he/she can take part on the fun quizzes. Also, SpellQuiz has included a new Idioms section that lets students learn all the common idioms with intriguing visuals.

We tend to be extra cautious while writing. Certainly, we don’t want to make any silly mistake and become a laughing stock — even worse, we could lose marks in the exams! While writing something, you can make three kinds of mistakes: spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

So, if you can avoid these mistakes, you’re guaranteed to have flawless writing skills! Wouldn’t that be a great thing?

Now, you should know that spelling and grammar are three completely different aspects of the English language. Your sense of English grammar will not help your spelling skills; however, it’s essential for punctuation marks.

Also, English grammar is a vast concept and we could hardly cover many areas in an article like this. You should stick to traditional grammar books if you want to become good. Plus, it’ll take years to cover all of the grammatical aspects.

Rather, we’ll help you with spelling and punctuation in this article. Especially, the spelling and punctuation rules that you need to know for spelling tests.

Let’s jump in!

 

Why Spelling and Punctuation Rules Are Important?

Spelling and Punctuation rules go hand in hand. For a spelling test, you need to have a good sense of punctuation. In fact, most spelling tests evaluate the knowledge of punctuation too.

Even the spelling tests in SpellQuiz take punctuation mistakes into account. For your spelling and punctuation exercises at school, you need to know where and when to put them in a sentence. Otherwise, you’ll lose marks!

 

Punctuation Rules Important for Spelling and Punctuation Tests

Essentially, punctuation refers to the set of rules to put punctuation marks in a written sentence as a reading guideline. These rules help the readers to decide — when to stop, pause, or change the tone.

In total, there are 14 different punctuation marks in English grammar. These are —

1. Full stop or period (.)
2. Question mark (?)
3. Exclamation mark (!)
4. Comma (,)
5. Colon (:)
6. Semi-colon (;)
7. Apostrophe (’)
8. Hyphen (-)
9. Quotation mark (“ ” or ‘ ‘)
10. Dashes: en dash and em dash (– or —)
11. Brackets ([  ])
12. Braces ({  })
13. Parenthesis ((  ))
14. Ellipsis ( … )

You should note that only the first seven (full-stop to apostrophe on the list above) hold importance for a spelling, punctuation, and grammar test. We don’t generally see quotation marks or brackets in a spelling and punctuation test.

Now, let’s turn our attention to where should we use the punctuation marks —

 

Full-Stop or Period

Full-stops (.) are the most common punctuation mark. We typically use it at the end of a declarative or an imperative sentence to show that the sentence has finished.

Examples:

• He went shopping. (declarative)
• Go there. (imperative)

Apart from that, we also full-stops after an abbreviation, fractions, name initials, and time. These full-stops don’t indicate the end of a sentence.

Examples:

• Abbreviation: He is the new E. teacher.
• Fractions: The wall is 70 meters tall.
• Name initials: K. Rowling is the author of Harry Potter books.
• Time: The train leaves at 30 a.m.

**Note: Sometimes, you need to use an exclamation mark at the end of an imperative sentence. Usually, the exclamation mark in an imperative sentence denotes urgency or seriousness.  

Example:

• Go there now! (Using the word now, you’re increasing the level of urgency here.)

Question Mark

We always put a question mark (?) at the end of an integrative sentence. This is the only rule for putting a question mark.

Example:

• When will the bus leave?

Exclamation Point

If you write an exclamatory sentence, you must use an exclamation mark. An exclamatory sentence is used to showcase strong emotion, such as — excitement, happiness, sorrow, frustration, surprise, anger, etc.

Examples:

• We have won the game!
• Ugh! This is a boring lecture.
• No! I failed in the exam.
• Fantastic, now we can all go to the party!

 

Are you looking for ways to practice spelling words for homework? Here’s guide with a large collection of unique spelling ideas. 

Comma

Commas (,) are perhaps the most common type of punctuation marks. Also, commas are the most abused and misused of all of them. The sheer number of rules for putting commas make things very confusing — even native users struggle with this one!

So, let’s pay attention!

 

1. Lists with More than Two Elements

While writing down a list with more than two elements, use commas to separate them. This is the easiest rule to remember for the commas.

Example:

• I bought chocolates, ice creams, and cakes for the party.

**Note: Adding a comma before and in a list is optional.

Examples:

• I bought chocolates, ice creams, and cakes for the party.
• I bought chocolates, ice creams and cakes for the party.

Here, both sentences are correct.

 

Looking for the best online spelling program? Check out our review of the  best online spelling programs of 2021!

2. Use Comma after Linking Words

We often start sentences with linking words. And, you need to add a comma every time after those linking words.

Examples:

• However, you should visit her.
• Also, I want to go with you.
• Moreover, I feel sorry for her.
• Plus, you owe me one.
• Nevertheless, you never thanked me for the big help.

**Note: Don’t use a comma after these introductory phrases as they function as nouns in sentences —

• That’s why I want to visit her with you.
• After the game will you go home?
• During the national anthem stand up to pay respect.

Not sure about how to learn spelling? Check out SpellQuiz’s detailed guide now!

3. Independent Clauses with Coordinating Conjunctions

If two (or more) independent clauses are separated by any of the seven coordinating conjunctions, put a comma before the conjunction. The seven conjunctions are — and, or, but, for, nor, so, and yet. To remember them, you could use a rhyme,  

And, or, but,

For, nor,

So, yet!

Let’s take a look at some examples —

• He wanted to go, but his teacher didn’t give permission.
• Sarah was sick, so her mom insisted her to take rest.
• She sang really well, yet the judges were not impressed.   

**Note: You CANNOT use a comma without a coordinating conjunction to separate independent clauses. In such cases, you’ll have to use a semicolon.

Incorrect: We were out of orange juice, I went to the store to buy some.

Correct: We were out of orange juice, so I went to the store to buy some.

Correct: We were out of orange juice; I went to the store to buy some.

 

4. Introductory Adverbial Phrases

You should use a comma after an adverbial phrase at the beginning of a sentence. For shorter sentences, you can omit the comma, but it might leave a chance to misread the sentence. So, you should take it is a hard and fast rule to always be on the safer side.

Examples:

• While Megan was sleeping, robbers entered the house.
• Because she failed in the exam, her mom was upset.
• Grabbing the umbrella, George rushed to the store.

 

5. Adding Additional Information Using Interrupters or Parenthetical Elements

You can add additional information to a complete sentence using two methods: interrupters or parenthetical elements. Now, you should remember that the removal of these two elements doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence. But they can help you add emotional depth, emphasis, and clarification.

Also, if the interrupters or parenthetical elements are used in the middle, you need to put two commas — before and after them.

Examples:

• Rainy days, my favorite weather, are best for re-watching your favorite movies.
• George Washington, the first President of the U.S.A., was the commander of the Continental Army.

**Note: You can also offer additional information using non-restrictive clauses. These non-restrictive clauses also offer non-essential information, and often, begin with which or who.   

Example:

• Gordon Ramsey, who is a multi-Michelin starred chef, is a judge of MasterChef US.  
• Jurassic Park, which is Adam’s favorite movie, won three Oscars.

 

6. Essential (Restrictive) and Non-essential (Non-Restrictive) Phrases and Clauses

You already have some idea about the essential and non-essential phrases from the previous rule. This rule elaborates the concept even further.

If we use a phrase or a clause that is essential or necessary to express the complete meaning of a sentence, we refer to that phrase or clause as essential or restrictive.

On the other hand, if we can comprehend the complete meaning of a sentence without those phrases or clauses, we refer to them as non-essential or non-restrictive.

Now comes the rule —

ALWAYS use commas for non-essentials and NEVER use commas for essentials.

Got it?

Let’s check out the examples —

• The restaurant that Sarah recommended is amazing. (Essential)
• The new Burger King Restaurant, which Sarah recommended, is amazing. (Non-essential)

 

• Please fix the grammatical errors as well as (Essential as well as)
• Grammatical errors, as well as punctuation mistakes, are distracting. (Non-essential as well as)

 

• Trees such as pine and coconut don’t shed leaves in winter. (Essential such as)
• Evergreen trees, such as pine and coconut, don’t shed leaves in winter. (Non-essential such as)

 

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation Sherlock Holmes is the literature’s greatest detective. (Essential appositives)
• My friend, Nazrin, is a wonderful speller. (Non-essential appositives)

 

7. Question Tags

We use question tags to ask the readers to agree with our opinions regarding obvious statements. These tags come after an assertive sentence and are separated by a comma.

Examples:

• These Christmas decorations are beautiful, aren’t they?
• They don’t like playing hockey, do they?
• I know, right?

 

8. Directly Addressing a Person

If you want to address someone by name, we need to put a comma before the name.

Examples:

Ron, pick up the phone.

How are you, Ashley?

 

9. Dates and Addresses

When writing date in the month-date-year format or day of the week and date format, separate them using commas. The same can be said about addresses.

Examples:

• The Avengers: Endgame initially got released on April 22, 2019.
• He was born on Monday, May 13, 1968.
• On Tuesday, December 20, at five o’clock, we will have the rematch.

 

• Write down the address — 15, Yemen Road, Yemen.

**Note: Other date formats, like — date-month-year, don’t need any comma separation.

Examples:

• The Avengers: Endgame was initially released on 22 April 2019.
• He was born on 13^th May 1968.

 

10. Direct Quote

Separate an attribute tag (he said, she claimed) and a direct quote with a comma. Also, use a comma inside the quotation marks, instead of a full stop, if the quote sits before the attribute tag.

Examples:

• Mat said, “I want to go home.”
• “Let’s play another game,” suggested Rachel.

**Note: If the direct quote before an attribute tag ends with a question or exclamation mark, don’t use a comma.

Examples:  

• “Why don’t you leave me alone?” she asked.
• “Leave me alone!” she said angrily.

 

Colon

Yes, the long list of rules for commas is quite intimidating. But don’t worry, the rest of the spelling and punctuation rules are pretty straightforward.

Think about colons (:) for example. Colons are typically used before a list. In this case, the colon is a substitute for which is or which are.

Sometimes, people use colons for quotations too. If you use colons for quotations, you don’t need to put quotation marks.

Examples:

• Phoebe invited three guests to the party: Joey, Ross, and Chandler.
• She said: The party would be a blast!

 

Semicolon

Semicolons (;) also have limited use cases. You can use a semicolon to separate closely related independent clauses. In these cases, you should put the semicolon before the linking words.

Also, you can replace the ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’, ‘because’ with a semicolon to shift from one thought to another without ending the sentences with a full-stop.

Examples:

• He went to the party; however, his sister didn’t go.
• Monica was sad; Phoebe didn’t invite her to the party.   

 

Apostrophe

In this rule of spelling and punctuation exercises, we’ll look into apostrophe (‘). We use an apostrophe in only two scenarios.

First, an apostrophe indicates someone’s possession. But remember, we use the possession apostrophe only for people. You don’t need to use an apostrophe for objects.

Examples:

• Monica’s Thanksgiving Turkey is very popular.
• The office door was wide open. (No apostrophe for objects)

Second, we use apostrophe contractions that denote a missing letter.

Examples:

• They’re = They are
• Don’t = Do not
• Ain’t = Am not, is not, or are not

 

Final Words

As you can see, to have an impeccable sense of punctuation, you need to have a strong grammar sense. For example, types of sentences, clauses, phrases, and conjunctions are essential for punctuation.

That’s why it’s important to study all three elements of writing, spelling, punctuation, and grammar, at the same time. Also, your writing skills will improve a lot if you can work on your spelling and punctuation practices.

What are you waiting for? Start practicing with SpellQuiz Spelling Test to improve your spelling and punctuation at the same time.