"You're So Smart" Backfires: How to Praise a Kid's Spelling
The wrong praise makes kids avoid hard words; the right kind makes them chase them. What to say after the test — good score or bad — and what to stop saying.
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Tips, word lists, and updates from the Spelling Test team.
The Forgetting Curve: Why Sunday's Spelling Words Vanish by Friday
Your child knew all ten words Sunday night and missed six on Friday. That's not bad memory — that's the forgetting curve, and a small schedule change beats it.
Pencil or Keyboard? What Handwriting and Typing Each Do for Spelling
Does writing words by hand really beat typing them? The research says both earn a place — they build different parts of the skill. Here's how to split the week.
Autocorrect Exists. Does Spelling Still Matter for Kids?
It's a fair question in 2026: why drill spelling when every device fixes it? The honest answer — what autocorrect covers, what it can't, and what spelling is really for.
Colour or Color? Helping Kids Handle British and American Spelling
Your child's book says 'colour', the app says 'color', and the teacher wants consistency. The five patterns behind British vs American spelling, kid-sized.
Why Is English Spelling So Weird? A History Kids Actually Enjoy
Why does 'ough' have six sounds? Why the silent K? The answer is a 1,500-year story of invasions, lazy tongues, and a printing press — and telling it changes how kids spell.
There, Their, and They're: Ending the Homophone Wars at Home
The there/their/they're triangle defeats spellcheck, teachers' patience, and plenty of adults. Five confusable sets cause most of the trouble — here's the fix for each.
Cupboard, Football, Butterfly: The Easy Win of Compound Words
Compound words are the friendliest spelling lesson in English — two known words snap into one new one. Easy wins, one sneaky trap, and games kids genuinely love.
It's Not Hard, Don't Panic: Teaching Contractions and Apostrophes
Kids write 'dont', 'were' for 'we're', and the dreaded 'it's/its' swap. One idea fixes most of it: the apostrophe marks the scene of a crime — letters were stolen.
When Two Vowels Go Walking: Making Sense of Vowel Teams
Rain, ray, rein, reign — four spellings for one sound is why kids call English unfair. A parent's guide to vowel teams: which ones matter, and the position tricks that tame them.
Word Surgery: How Prefixes and Roots Turn Big Words into Easy Ones
'Unhelpfulness' looks like a spelling nightmare — until a kid sees it's just un + help + ful + ness. Morphology is the spelling superpower of the upper grades.
Hoping vs. Hopping: The Suffix Rules That End the Guessing
Drop the e? Double the letter? Change the y? Three suffix rules govern thousands of words — and they're the highest-value spelling lesson in elementary school.