Spelling Bee Preparation
WELCOME!
Review the strategy and ideas for each lesson and then complete the practice activity to increase your spelling power.
Use this choice board:
SUPER SPELLER SET- CHOICE BOARD
to keep track of your progress. You can also earn the Super Speller Set Badge, so keep track of the projects you complete.
Nauseous
Onomatopoeia
Mischievous
Accommodate
A trick that good spellers use is to focus on the pronunciation of a word before working on the spelling of the word. Knowing the correct pronunciation of the word will make it much easier to remember.
You can use the internet to help you with finding the pronunciation of a word. Type in the word and then word then "pronounce". It will pop up for you to click on.
Practice: Look up the pronunciation for 3 words on the list to the left. Type the word in the search bar in Safari and then the word "pronounce". These words might not be new to you, but this is practice so you can learn how to find the pronunciation if needed.
With a little practice, you can improve your spelling for even the trickiest words. Begin by reviewing this list of the top 10 of some of the most commonly misspelled words in English.
Practice: Start by learning the pronunciation for each word on the list. For each word do this process do the 3-2-1 process
Whisper spell the word 3 times.
Write word in the air 2 times.
Look at the word, close your eyes, spell it in your head,
and look at it again to see if you are right 1 time.
Don't try to learn all the words at once. Even if you learn them all in one sitting, practice them a few at a time. Find out what works best for you — it may be one or two words or as many as three or four. Then, add another word to your list, or start on different ones. Each time you learn another word, go back and practice the ones you learned before it, because, after all, practice makes permanent.
Practice: Learn these 12 words or use a list of your choice. Learn one at a time.
Sometimes words are difficult to spell just because they are long. In these cases, you can use the chunking method. Chunking is when you separate the word into “chunks,” or shorter parts. This way, you’re not memorizing the spelling for one long word, but just a few short ones!
The word “embarrassed,” for example, can be chunked like this:
em
bar
ras
sed
Just remember the spelling for these four short “words,” and you’ll spell “embarrassed” correctly every time.
You can do this with any word you have trouble spelling—it makes them much easier to remember! Watch the video to the left.
Practice: Using these words or your own spelling list, practice the the chunking method.
biographical circumference chrysanthemum
unpredictable procrastinate personification
WORDS WITHIN WORDS!
This activity helps considerably with spelling because students do what good spellers do naturally; that is focus on the order of letters in a word and pay attention to all the letters in a word.
This is what the words within words activity looks like with the word, photosynthesis
Practice: Use a piece of graph paper and the word justification or vegetable to do this exercise. It is ok to use abbreviations if you find any
The English language is full of words that seem overstuffed with unnecessary letters, feel like they should be spelled a different way, or just don't make sense. Here are some of our favorites, explained.
Practice: After reading all 8 slides, practice spelling a few that will be the hardest for you to remember.
receipt, twelfth, medieval, weird, reference, rhyme, acknowledgment, accommodate, definitely, jewelry, restaurant, mischievous, desert, chief, conscience, and surprise
REVERSE CHAINING BY LETTER
• Say the word (look up how to say it if necessary) Then write it, saying each letter (be enthusiastic and expressive) W - O - R - D
• Skip a line and say it and write it again — minus the last letter. Say the last letter, but don't write it. W - O - R - ____
• Skip a line and say it and write it again — minus the last two letters. Say them, but don't write them. W - O - ___ ____
Do that until you're only writing one letter.
• Go back to the top. Read the word, then spell it out loud.
• Fold the page over so you can't see the whole word. Say the word, spell it, and add that last letter.
• Fold the page back again. Say the word, spell it, and add the last two letters.
• Keep going until you spell the whole word.
• GO BACK AND CHECK — make sure you didn't leave out a letter.
Practice: Use some words from the list to the right or 3 words of your choice and use the reverse chaining by letter strategy to practice.
MEMORY TRICKS
Practice: Write each of the words as well as the trick in yellow on a piece of paper. Do you know any more tricks? Share your memory tricks with a friend.
Some words, like separate, are only hard in some parts-so highlight the hard parts! Here's something to help you focus on the troublesome part. This is also a good technique for learning rules and patterns.
Get different color pens or pencils or markers, and index cards. Write the words vividly, boldly on the cards — and make the 'hard part' a different color than the rest… maybe with stripes on the letters.
Make a mental picture of that card, read the word aloud and spell it aloud, and change the way you say the "hard part," maybe saying it louder, maybe putting on a British accent.
So, you'd write: sepArate
When you write the whole word, think about the hard part, what it looks like or sounds like. So, while you're writing "separate," you might be thinking "sep-AY-rate" and/or visualizing that bold, red A.
Again, the keys here are to NOT overwhelm your brain — don't try to learn 5 words at a time like this unless you've got an amazing visual memory. Better to do one word 5 times.
Practice: Use the word list to the right or words of your choice that have tricky spellings and use the highlight the hard part strategy to practice.
SILENT LETTERS? WHY ARE YOU EVERYWHERE? There are legitimate explanations for why words like pterodactyl and tsunami exist. The English language is notorious for its use of silent letters. In fact, about 60 percent of English words contain a silent letter. But these often distressing words weren’t intended to be so confusing. The reasons for silent letters can be traced back centuries. Click on this link to read an article that gives you a few answers.
Practice: Look over this list of words with silent letters. Work on the spelling for a few of them that you do not already know.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee has been a (mostly) yearly tradition since the 1920s. How would you fare trying to spell these baffling winning words? The Scripps National Spelling Bee got its start in 1925, and since then, the competition has challenged participants to remember exactly how to spell some of the hardest words out there.
Practice: Get a piece of paper. Read about each word on the slide show to the left. For each word, click the button to hear the word pronounced for you. Spell the word on your paper. Check your spelling at the end of the 3 question quiz.