Five Fun Ways to Study Spelling Words

Every child in America has to study spelling words at some point in their life, so why not make it fun? As a parent and an educator I found that by using different learning style methods to study, children became excited to practice their words every night. Whether you use a hands-on approach, visual method, or auditory technique, learning to spell new words can become a fun evening activity instead of a dreaded responsibility.

Shaving Cream Speller (for visual and hands-on learners)
Squirt some shaving cream on your kitchen counter and you are ready to put your finger in the white foam to spell words and clean your counter all at the same time. Shaving cream is a safe cleaner for most surfaces and washes away easily from your hands after you spell your list of words in it. If you don’t want the mess in your kitchen allow your child to practice their words while taking a bath. You will love the way your tub surround shines after this activity. Place the spelling list in a 3-hole plastic page protector and hang it in the bathroom using small suction cup hooks. You will find your kids wanting to bath and study much more frequently!

Cookie Sheet Speller (for visual, auditory, and hands-on learners)
Purchase several sets of plastic magnetic alphabet letters or create your own by printing letters on card stock and laminating them with clear contact paper. Say a word for your child and then have them spell it on the cookie sheet. For auditory learners, have them put the word at the top of the sheet and drag each letter down in the correct order as they say the letter aloud.

Colorful Words (for visual learners)
Choose three colored pencils that will work well together, for example: yellow, blue, and green. Have your child write the first spelling word by copying it from the list. Use the lightest colored pencil first, then take the next lightest color and write over each letter. Finally, take the darkest color and go over the word again. A variation of this method is to use one colored pencil and build the word as you go down the page. So for the word crayon you would write c on the first line, then on the second line you would write cr. The third line would be cra and so on. It would look like this:
c
cr
cra
cray
crayo
crayon
This can be time consuming but this is how I helped my daughter pass her spelling tests when nothing else was working.

Use Technology (for visual, auditory, and hands-on learners)
www.spellingcity.com is a wonderful (and FREE) website that allows your child to type their words in and then play games and do activities with the words. If you don’t have internet you could also also use a word processing program and allow your child to type their spelling words and then change the fonts and colors of their words. Print the list and cut the words out. Next, say a word and have your child find it in the pile and then have them give it to you and try to spell it aloud to you. If they spell it right keep it out of the pile, if they spell it incorrectly, put it back in the pile. After a few nights the pile of correctly spelled words will increase.

Scrabble Speller (for hands-on and visual learners)
Use letters from a Scrabble game (which you can often find at yard sales and thrift stores) to spell words on the list. The parent should spell a word on the list with the tiles and add a letter or switch the place of two letters and then have the child correct it. This activity of fixing the words will help them remember the correct spelling long after the test is over. You can also mix up the letters to the word completely and have your child try to put them in the right order as quickly as possible. You can time your child each night and track their improvement on a graph to integrate math skills.

Studying spelling words should allow for the child to really process the word, the patterns within the English language and ways to use the word in other contexts. By trying some of these new approaches your child will not only enjoying studying the words more but, they will also make better connections with the words so that they can use them later on.It is a good idea to ask your child’s teacher for the spelling list on a Friday for the next week so you can study over the weekend when you have more time to really have fun with the words. The first time your child studies new words you should only spend about fifteen minutes on a list of ten words. The time you spend studying should increase a little each day if needed. Most teachers give spelling tests on Fridays, so if by Wednesday night your child doesn’t spell at least 75% of the words correctly you may need to try several of these methods in the same night or even for two nights in a row. My daughter struggled with spelling when she was in the primary grades but, after we started using these various methods for several weeks we found they she started moving through new lists faster and with less tears. She is now in middle school and still applies some of these methods when she studies her words or finds new words she wants to know how to spell correctly. Hopefully, you will find these methods fun and helpful and share them with other parents to use as well.


People also view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *