Back to School Study Tips: How to Prepare for Spelling Tests

Spelling tests are typically the first kind of tests that elementary school students face, and they can continue all the way through middle school in many cases. Therefore, as a parent, it is important that you know how to best help your children learn their list of spelling words every week, building their spelling skills that will follow them through the rest of their lives.

Spelling Test Study Tips: Practice Every Day

If your children come home with spelling lists on Monday and need to be ready for the test on Friday, you only have 4 evenings to help them study those words. Therefore, it is important that your child spend a little bit of time on spelling every day. The amount of time will vary depending on your child and their abilities, but anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes is appropriate.

Spelling Test Study Tips: Start With a Pre-Test

Many teachers have the students do a pre-test in class on Mondays, but if your child does not come home with one, do it yourselves that evening. This will help you to see which words you need to focus on most during the week. Each time you do a practice test, go over the answers and have your child write the correct spelling of any misspelled word 3 times.

Spelling Test Study Tips: Attend to Your Child's Learning Style

Depending on how your child learns best, there are a number of methods for studying spelling words. For tactile learners, a set of alphabet blocks or magnetic letters will go a long way in helping them to be able to move letters around and form the words with their hands. Auditory learners could say the words aloud in a way that helps them to remember how they are spelled (for example, say beautiful as "bE-A-yoU-ti-ful" to get the sound of the vowels that are at the beginning of the word.

Spelling Test Study Tips: Think of Similar Words

If your child is having a hard time learning how to spell a word, think of another word that they do know in which that same combination of letters makes the same sound. By building on things your child knows rather than starting from scratch, picking up the spelling of the word will be a much faster process.

Spelling Test Study Tips: Copy the List of Words

If your children will be writing the words on the spelling test, the best way to practice is by writing them while they study. Have your child write all of their spelling words each day, maybe even writing sentences that use one or more of the words.

Spelling Test Study Tips: Read Lots of Books

Lastly, and this is a long-term study tip rather than a short-term one, have your child read a lot of books. The best way to learn how to spell words is to see and recognize them in print over many years. If your child has already seen and read a particular word 20 times before it appears on their spelling list, chances are, they already know exactly how it is spelled.