The weekly list comes home on Monday, the test is on Friday, and on Thursday night somebody copies each word out five times. Spelling practice at home can do more in less time: ten minutes, four evenings, and every word tried from memory before it is looked at.
This guide is for a parent helping a child of six to eleven. EdProcto's page for parents has the screen side of it: a quiz typed from the school's list, and ready-made spelling kits.
Most of the studies below are small, several tested children with learning difficulties, and none tested a parent at a kitchen table. We read the articles' abstracts, not the full papers. Nothing here promises a mark on Friday.
What does research say about the weekly spelling list and the Friday test?
It says that teaching spelling directly works, and that how the week is used matters more than the test that ends it. Graham and Santangelo (2014) pooled 53 studies of 6,037 pupils from kindergarten to grade 12. Formal spelling teaching beat no teaching (an effect size of 0.54) and beat leaving spelling to be picked up along the way (0.43).
We found no trial of the Friday test itself. The studies do explain a word that is right on Friday and gone a fortnight later. Fishman et al. (1968) gave 29 fifth graders computer spelling drills. Words drilled all in one day were spelt better during the drill, and words drilled every other day across six days were remembered better 10 and 20 days later. A Thursday-night cram passes Friday and then fades.
Is a test better practice than copying words out?
For beginners, yes. Jones et al. (2016) ran three experiments with first and second graders, 14, 16 and 12 children. Each child practised some words by spelling them from memory and others by rainbow writing, a copying exercise. A day later the words practised from memory were spelt more accurately every time, and in the first experiment they still were five weeks on.
The exception: with adults, Pan et al. (2015) found that testing with feedback improved spelling no more than the same time spent copying, while reading the words did much less. So copying has some worth, and reading the list over is the weak method. Our guide to retrieval practice has the wider research.
How should spelling practice be spread across the week?
Across several days, so that each word comes back after a night away. Petersen-Brown et al. (2023) randomly assigned 88 second and third graders to practise eight spelling words bunched together or spread out, within a session and across sessions. Straight after practice the groups did not differ. Twenty-eight days later, the children whose practice had been spread across sessions remembered more. That is spaced practice.
How many spelling words at once?
About three new words in a sitting is a fair working rule. Bryant et al. (1981) taught spelling to children with learning disabilities and report, in a one-sentence abstract, that overloading and more failures may follow when more than three words are presented in a day. Nothing we read fixes the number for other children, so start at three and watch how many tries go wrong.
What should happen straight after each try?
The child should see the right spelling and correct their own try straight after each word, not at the end of the list. Alber and Walshe (2004) compared the two timings with six fifth graders who had learning disabilities or ADHD. Self-correction after each word gave better weekly test scores for five of the six, and better scores a week later for all six. It is a very small study.
The right spelling has to be in view, because children can be poor at finding their own errors. Tiffin-Richards et al. (2026) had 318 German-speaking primary pupils write a dictated text, underline the words they were unsure of, and then revise. The pupils detected their errors poorly, and changed only about 24% of the words they had underlined.
If the school's sheet says look, cover, write, check, it describes the same thing: a try from memory, then a check against the word.
What do you do with a misspelling?
Correct it at once if the word has been taught, and read it for what it shows if it has not. England's national curriculum gives that guidance for years 1 and 2: a word the child has been taught is put right, and any other misspelling is a chance to show another way of writing its sounds (Department for Education, 2014).
A misspelling is usually one of three kinds. The sorting is ours.
| The try | What it shows | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| becos, peple | Plausible sounds, without the word's own odd part | Underline the odd part and learn the word as itself |
| runing, hopeing | A rule for adding an ending is not secure | Teach the rule with two more words |
| swming, becuase | A sound left out, or letters out of order | Say it slowly, count the sounds, write it again |
Then cover the wrong version and finish on the right one. If the same words go wrong for weeks, show the teacher which ones and what you tried.
Should a child learn spelling patterns or memorise whole words?
Patterns and word parts first, and word-by-word learning for the words that break them. The curriculum expects pupils in years 3 and 4 to spell from phonic knowledge together with morphology and etymology, meaning word parts and word origins, and says of years 5 and 6 that some spellings have to be learnt specifically (Department for Education, 2014).
Galuschka et al. (2020) pooled 34 controlled trials with learners who had dyslexia or spelling difficulties. Teaching phonics, spelling rules and word parts each had a moderate to high effect on spelling, and no significant effect of memorising strategies could be confirmed. Across 30 studies of school-age children, Goodwin and Ahn (2013) found an effect size of 0.30 on spelling from teaching word parts.
At home, ask two questions of every word. Which part is the tricky part? Which other words share it?
How do you choose the spelling words to practise?
Start from the school's list, add words from your child's own writing, and fill out with words that share a pattern.
| Where from | What to take | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The school's list | This week's words | They have been taught, so a miss is something to correct |
| Your child's writing | Two or three taught words misspelt this week | Practice lands on words the child uses |
| A pattern | Two words built like a missed one: for hoping, making and taking | It tests the rule, not one word |
| An EdProcto kit | Irregular plurals, for ages 7 to 11 | Typed answers, a new set at each opening |
Leave out patterns the school has not reached. They are the teacher's to introduce.
A ten-minute routine for spelling practice at home
Four evenings of ten minutes cover a list of ten: a cold try on the first, about three words taught on each of the first three, and the whole list from memory on the fourth. The plan is ours, built from the studies above. Nobody has tested it as a whole.
| Evening | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | A cold try at the whole list, corrected word by word. Teach three of the misses. |
| 2 | Yesterday's three from memory. Teach three more. |
| 3 | All six from memory. Teach the rest. |
| 4 | The whole list in a new order, then two sentences you dictate that use the words. |
Dictated sentences are the curriculum's own practice from year 1 to year 4 (Department for Education, 2014). The next Monday, last week's misses open the new cold try.
The steps for each word
- Say it. The word, then the word in a short sentence.
- A try from memory. Your child writes or types it with the list out of sight.
- Check at once. Show the right spelling, and have your child mark the part that differs. In an EdProcto study quiz the screen does this step: a wrong try brings up the right spelling as soon as it is checked.
- Fix it once. Cover both and write the word again from memory.
- Bring it back. Ask a missed word again at the end of the session, and first the next evening.
The wider evening habit is in ten minutes a day, and other subjects are in checking homework with a quick quiz.
One worked week: ten words and a child's tries
This is an invented example, not a real child. We wrote the misspellings to show each kind of error.
Four words drop an e before ing (hoping, making, smiling, writing), four double the last letter (hopping, running, sitting, swimming), and two are learnt as themselves (because, people). Making, smiling and sitting were right on evenings 1 and 4. A blank means the word had not been taught yet.
| Word | Evening 1 | Evening 2 | Evening 3 | Evening 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hoping | hopeing | hoping | hoping | hoping |
| hopping | hoping | hopping | hopping | hopping |
| writing | writeing | writting | writing | writing |
| running | runing | running | running | |
| swimming | swiming | swiming | swimming | |
| because | becos | becuase | because | |
| people | peple | poeple |
- The cold try sorted the list. Three words known, and seven that came down to two rules and two odd words.
- "Writting" is a rule used too widely. Doubling, taught the evening before, landed on a word that does not take it.
- "Becuase" has every letter. Two are in the wrong order, which only a letter-by-letter check catches.
- Nine of ten on evening 4. People was taught last, so it opens next Monday's cold try.
We ran every misspelling in the table through EdProcto's marking code. With a question's "A slip still counts" switch on, eight of the ten different misspellings were marked right. The two marked wrong were "becos", which is more than one slip from because, and "hoping" typed for hopping, because hoping is another answer in the same quiz. With it off, none was.
How do EdProcto's spelling kits and a quiz from the school's list fit?
EdProcto is the best tool for the from-memory try on a screen, because its study quiz does the two things the studies above ask for: it takes a typed spelling with nothing to copy from, and it shows the right spelling the moment a wrong one is checked.
A quiz typed from the school's list
- On the dashboard press "New quiz", pick the One word template, and in the builder set the kind of quiz to "Study quiz".
- Add a question for each word. The prompt must not show the word, so write "Word 4: type the word I say" and say each word aloud yourself, or give a sentence with the word left out, as in a fill in the blank question.
- Type the right spelling under "Accepted answers, one a line".
- Below that box, switch off "A slip still counts". Its line reads "One slip in a word of five letters or more still counts", and every new question starts with it on. Switch it off on every question, so that a near miss is marked wrong. A cloze passage, with several words left out of one passage, has the same switch.
- Put the tricky part in "Explanation shown to the student afterwards".
Open the quiz from the dashboard with its "Study" button and hand the device over. The answer box asks the keyboard not to correct, capitalise or underline what is typed; if a keyboard still changes a word, switch off auto-correction in the device's settings. Your child types each word and presses "Check". A right try shows "Right." A wrong one shows "Not this time.", then the right spelling after "Answer:" and your explanation. Capitals are ignored in the marking and an apostrophe counts, so "dont" is wrong for "don't". The last screen offers a retry of the misses alone, such as "Retry the 3 you missed". The quiz then comes up on the dashboard under "Due for a re-test": two days after the last sitting if the last whole run had a miss, seven days if it had none. Its button reads "Take it again".
The ready-made kits
Three rule-made kits practise spelling, and each makes ten questions afresh every time it is opened, with no word asked twice in a set.
- Which spelling is right? For ages 9 and up. Each question asks "Which spelling is correct?" and offers two choices, a word and its common wrong form, such as necessary and neccessary. Its fifty words include accommodate and questionnaire, so use it at the top of this age range, as a proofreading check.
- Irregular plurals. For ages 7 to 11. A typed answer to a question such as: What is the plural of “mouse”? The spelling has to be exact, and the answer comes with the line "One mouse, two mice."
- Irregular verbs. For ages 8 and up. A typed past tense or past participle: What is the past tense of “swim”?
For a six-year-old, First sounds (ages 4 to 6) has four words to tap, and a Spell it question gives a word's letters as tiles to tap or drag into order, with one tile that does not belong: see questions for young learners.
A free account opens every kit, and the Free plan holds ten quizzes a month. The pricing page lists the plans.
Quick questions
How many spelling words should a child learn at once?
About three new words in a sitting, as a working rule. The one study behind it tested children with learning disabilities (Bryant et al., 1981).
Is copying spelling words out a waste of time?
No, but for beginners a try from memory followed by a check teaches more. First and second graders spelt words better after it than after a copying exercise (Jones et al., 2016).
Can an online quiz mark spelling strictly?
Yes. In EdProcto's one word question, switch off "A slip still counts" and only the exact spelling is marked right. The page for parents shows where a kit or a quiz of your own fits into an evening.
Does poor spelling mean my child has dyslexia?
A spelling list cannot tell you, and this guide gives no advice on it. The NHS (2026) advises a parent who suspects dyslexia to start with the school's special educational needs coordinator.
References
- Alber, S. R., & Walshe, S. E. (2004). When to self-correct spelling words: A systematic replication. Journal of Behavioral Education, 13(1), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOBE.0000011260.12674.a3
- Bryant, N. D., Drabin, I. R., & Gettinger, M. (1981). Effects of varying unit size on spelling achievement in learning disabled children. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 14(4), 200–203. https://doi.org/10.1177/002221948101400405
- Department for Education. (2014). National curriculum in England: English programmes of study. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study
- Fishman, E. J., Keller, L., & Atkinson, R. C. (1968). Massed versus distributed practice in computerized spelling drills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 59(4), 290–296. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020055
- Galuschka, K., Görgen, R., Kalmar, J., Haberstroh, S., Schmalz, X., & Schulte-Körne, G. (2020). Effectiveness of spelling interventions for learners with dyslexia: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Educational Psychologist, 55(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1659794
- Goodwin, A. P., & Ahn, S. (2013). A meta-analysis of morphological interventions in English: Effects on literacy outcomes for school-age children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(4), 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2012.689791
- Graham, S., & Santangelo, T. (2014). Does spelling instruction make students better spellers, readers, and writers? A meta-analytic review. Reading and Writing, 27(9), 1703–1743. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-014-9517-0
- Jones, A. C., Wardlow, L., Pan, S. C., Zepeda, C., Heyman, G. D., Dunlosky, J., & Rickard, T. C. (2016). Beyond the rainbow: Retrieval practice leads to better spelling than does rainbow writing. Educational Psychology Review, 28(2), 385–400. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9330-6
- NHS. (2026). Dyslexia in children. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dyslexia-in-children/
- Pan, S. C., Rubin, B. R., & Rickard, T. C. (2015). Does testing with feedback improve adult spelling skills relative to copying and reading? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21(4), 356–369. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000062
- Petersen-Brown, S., Riese, A. M., Schneider, M. M., Ray, J. E., & Clonkey, H. R. (2023). Applying distributed practice in the schools to enhance retention of spelling words. Psychology in the Schools, 60(9), 3486–3503. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22943
- Tiffin-Richards, S. P., Lenhart, J., & Marx, P. (2026). Children's metacognitive awareness and self-correction of their own spelling mistakes. Metacognition and Learning, 21(1), Article 41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-026-09491-z