Key takeaways
- Children store a spelling by linking each sound to the letters that spell it, not by remembering the word's outline.
- Writing a word from memory and then checking it builds more memory than copying or tracing it.
- Short, spread-out practice beats one long session, and words should come back in later weeks.
- Teach the pattern as well as the list: rules carry over to new words, and memorized lists mostly do not.
How a spelling gets into memory
Reading researcher Linnea Ehri calls it orthographic mapping. A child says a word, hears its sounds, and connects each sound to the letters that spell it: f, r, ie, n, d. Once those links are made the word is stored, and it comes back both for reading and for spelling. In her studies, children who said a word aloud while looking at its spelling remembered the spelling better, even without writing it.
This is why saying the sounds matters on every kind of practice sheet, and why the shape of a word is no help. Many words share one outline, so an outline cannot tell a child which letters to write.
Why writing it from memory beats copying it
Psychologists have measured the generation effect for decades: people remember words they produce themselves better than words they only read. Across 86 studies the advantage was moderate, larger when the whole word had to be produced than when only part of it did, and larger again when the test came a day or more later.
The same idea holds in classrooms. First and second graders who heard a word, wrote it from memory and checked it remembered far more spellings a day and five weeks later than children who did rainbow writing, and they enjoyed it just as much. Two limits are worth knowing. The child needs to study the correct spelling first, because producing a word you have never seen helps little. And unscrambling letters did not help memory in the lab studies.
Tracing sits on the wrong side of this line. It helps a child form letters, but the answer stays in view the whole time. The full story is in Does Tracing Help Children Remember Spellings?
Which activity when
| Activity | What it trains | Best for | How well it builds spelling memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Look, say, cover, write, check | Writing the word from memory, then checking it | Most of the week, from about age 6 | Strong. The most studied of the common activities. |
| Trace, then write from memory | Letter formation, then recall | Children still learning to form letters | Weak if it stops at tracing, stronger with the memory step |
| Missing letters | Producing the tricky part of a word | Practising one pattern, such as ie or ough | Moderate. Writing the whole word afterwards helps more. |
| Word sorts and pattern lessons | Seeing why a word is spelled the way it is | Transfer to words not on the list | Strong for new words |
| ABC order | Alphabetizing and dictionary skills | Dictionary practice | No evidence it builds spelling on its own |
| Word shapes | A word's outline | A puzzle once the words are known | Not supported |
To print these from your own list, the spelling worksheet generator makes look-say-cover-write-check, trace-then-remember, missing-letter, ABC order and word shape sheets as one PDF, with a version for each child in a class.
A week that makes words stick
Start with a short pretest the child marks themselves, so practice goes on the words they actually miss. Practice those from memory with a check, bring a few older words back mid-week, and move missed words into a later list rather than dropping them after Friday.
Habits worth dropping
- Rainbow writing. Tracing a word in several colors is copying. In the classroom study above it lost clearly to writing from memory.
- Writing a word ten times. Ten copies with the word in view is still copying. Two or three tries from memory, each one checked, do more.
- Word shapes as a strategy. Keep them as a puzzle. They do not teach which letters to write.
- Learning styles. Matching practice to a "visual" or "kinesthetic" learner has no reliable support. Every child benefits from saying, writing and checking.
Chapters
- Does Tracing Help Children Remember Spellings? What tracing is good for, why it does little for spelling, and how to add the step that builds memory.
- For letter formation itself, see Teaching Handwriting.
The description of how spellings are stored, and the finding that saying a word while seeing it improves spelling memory, are from Linnea Ehri's account of orthographic mapping (Scientific Studies of Reading, 2014).
The generation effect figures are from Bertsch, Pesta, Wiscott and McDaniel's meta-analysis of the generation effect (Memory and Cognition, 2007).
The classroom comparison of writing from memory with rainbow writing is Jones and colleagues' retrieval practice versus rainbow writing (Educational Psychology Review, 2016).
The effect of formal spelling instruction is from Graham and Santangelo's meta-analysis of spelling instruction (Reading and Writing, 2014), and the finding that taught rules transfer to new words where list learning does not is from Dymock and Nicholson's comparison of list learning and spelling rules (2017).
How Children Learn to Spell: A Practical Guide: FAQ
What is the best way to practice spelling words?
Say the word and its sounds while looking at it, cover it, write it from memory, then check it and fix any mistake. Do this for a few minutes on several days rather than all at once, and bring the word back in a later week.
Why does my child spell a word right on Friday and wrong the next week?
Friday's test often measures short-term memory. Words stick when they are practiced from memory over several days and come back in later weeks, and when the child understands the pattern behind the spelling.
Do spelling lists work?
A list is a fine way to choose words. What matters is how they are practiced: from memory with a check, spread over the week, with the pattern taught alongside the words.