# Spelling quizzes with letter tiles: when and how to use them

**When should a spelling question be answered with letter tiles, and how do I write one?** Spelling quizzes with letter tiles give a child a word's letters, shuffled, with one extra, to move into place. They suit children of about five to eight who are learning to turn sounds into letters in order, and learners of a new alphabet. Because the letters are given, use a typed or handwritten spelling to check that a word is remembered.

Published 2026-10-10 by EdProcto. https://edprocto.com/guides/spelling-quizzes-with-letter-tiles

A child of five who can hear the three sounds in "ship" may not yet be able to write the letters for them. Spelling quizzes with letter tiles test that step alone: the letters are on the screen, and the child chooses them and puts them in order.

EdProcto, which publishes this guide, carries the shape as [Spell it](https://edprocto.com/templates/drag_letter): your word's letters as tiles, shuffled, with one that does not belong, marked by rule.

The short version: tiles for words a child is learning to build from sounds, a typed or handwritten spelling for words that must be remembered, and every wrong arrangement read, not only counted. We read the studies below as abstracts or database summaries, and none promises a result for any one child.

## What does research say about building words from letters?

Moving letters to spell words is sound early teaching, most clearly beside writing.

| Source | What it covered | Found |
| --- | --- | --- |
| National Reading Panel (2000) | 52 studies of teaching children to work with the sounds in words | Most effective when children manipulated the sounds with letters; spelling improved for normally achieving children, not for children with reading disabilities |
| Weiser and Mathes (2011) | 11 studies of spelling instruction for pupils at risk | Pupils who learned phoneme-grapheme relationships with letter tiles or plastic letters, and wrote them, outperformed comparison groups in spelling and decoding |
| Ouellette and Sénéchal (2008) | Kindergarten children, mean age 5 years 7 months, four weeks | Those who spelt words as best they could, with feedback, learned to read more words than groups trained in sound awareness or drawing |

Phoneme-grapheme mapping is the link in the middle row: a sound, and the letter or letters that write it. Invented spelling, a child's best try at an untaught word, is the bottom row: a reason to welcome it.

Teachers know relatives of the tile question as word building and Making Words, the guided group spelling lesson that Cunningham and Cunningham (1992) set out for beginning readers; ERIC's summary, all we read, reports two sample lessons and no trial. Letter tiles and magnetic letters are one tool in two materials.

### Why is arranging given letters easier than recalling them?

Because two jobs are taken away: forming each letter by hand, and calling it up from memory. Puranik and Apel (2010) had preschool children spell single words with letter tiles, aloud and in writing. Until a child could write about 19 letters adequately, tile spelling beat oral spelling, and oral beat written. Past that point the task made no difference.

So a tile question shows what a beginner knows about a word's sounds before the pencil can. It also gives things away: the places show the word's length, and the tray shows every letter in it, the second l in ball and the k in knife. It measures choosing and ordering, not whether a child remembers which letters a word has.

Luck plays little part: four tiles fill three places in 24 ways, and five fill four in 120 (our arithmetic).

### What is known about extra letters and small hands?

Little. We found no study of how many extra letters a tile task should carry or which letter is best, so the advice below is ours.

On dragging, Abdul Aziz et al. (2014) watched children aged two to four use an iPad: four-year-olds managed all seven common gestures, while a high share of two-year-olds struggled with drag and drop. None was five to eight, or spelling. Target sizes are in [questions for young learners](https://edprocto.com/guides/questions-for-young-learners-big-targets-little-reading).

## When are letter tiles the right spelling question, and when is typing or handwriting?

Tiles are right while a child is learning to turn a word's sounds into letters in order; typing or handwriting is right once the question is whether the word is remembered.

| What you want to know | Ask with | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Can the child put a taught word's sounds into letters, in order? | Letter tiles: [Spell it](https://edprocto.com/templates/drag_letter) in EdProcto | No pencil, no keyboard, and a wrong arrangement shows its kind |
| Is the spelling remembered, silent letters and doubled letters included? | A typed word: [One word](https://edprocto.com/templates/one_word), with "A slip still counts" off | Nothing on screen to recognise |
| Can the child write it in a sentence? | Pencil and paper, or [Handwritten work](https://edprocto.com/templates/handwriting) | Spelling and handwriting together |

Whether tile practice teaches a spelling as well as writing does is not settled. Cunningham and Stanovich (1990) had 48 first graders practise words by writing them, building them with letter tiles or typing them, and handwriting came out best. Vaughn et al. (1992) repeated it with 48 primary pupils, half with learning disabilities, and found no difference between the methods; few words were learned by any. Treat tiles as a step towards the pencil: the week's routine is in [spelling practice at home](https://edprocto.com/guides/spelling-practice-at-home-quizzes-that-teach).

### Older learners of a new alphabet

For a teenager or an adult learning Greek or Cyrillic letters, tiles solve a practical problem: the learner can spell дом with no keyboard for that alphabet. For learning the letters themselves the pen has support. Wiley and Rapp (2021) trained 42 adults on letters by typing, by looking or by handwriting, and handwriting gave faster learning that carried further to untrained tasks. See also [learning a language alone](https://edprocto.com/guides/learning-a-language-alone-quizzes-for-vocabulary-listening-and-grammar).

## How do you choose the word, the extra tile and the prompt?

Choose a short, taught word, give it by voice or with a picture in your hand, and let one extra tile make the last letter a decision.

1. **Take taught words.** England's curriculum treats a misspelt taught word as something to correct, and any other misspelling as a chance to teach another way of writing its sounds (Department for Education, 2014).
2. **Prefer words spelt as they sound** while the aim is sounds in order: ship, frog, jump. Keep a word whose trap is a silent or doubled letter for a typed check: the tray would show it.
3. **Keep them short:** three or four letters at five or six, up to six by eight, as a working rule.
4. **Give the word without showing it.** Say it, then say it in a sentence, or hold up the picture or the object. For a child who reads, type a sentence with a gap as the prompt: "The ____ sailed out to sea."
5. **Use one extra tile.** With none, the last letter places itself. EdProcto's [Spell it](https://edprocto.com/templates/drag_letter) deals the extra itself: for an English word, a letter the word does not use. With magnetic letters on a table, pick the letter a child would most likely reach for by mistake, such as c beside k, as for any [distractor](https://edprocto.com/guides/how-to-write-distractors-that-work).
6. **Look at the tiles first.** An extra tile can make another real word: with a c in the tray, ship can become chip.
7. **Sit beside a young child,** and read the instruction line aloud the first time.

## How do you read a child's wrong arrangement?

By its kind. The curriculum's notes for year 2 put spelling in one sentence: segment the spoken word into phonemes, then represent all the phonemes by graphemes in the right order (Department for Education, 2014). A wrong arrangement fails one of those jobs. The sorting is ours.

| The arrangement | What it suggests | What to do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| SIHP for ship: right tiles, wrong order | The sounds are heard; their order, or a pair of letters sharing one sound, is not fixed | Say the word slowly, a finger for each sound, and rebuild it |
| CHIP for ship: the extra tile in a place | That sound's letter is not secure, or the word was misheard | Say both words; build two more with the sound |
| NIFE for knife, K in the tray: a silent letter left out | Spelling by sound; this word's own letter is not learnt | Teach the word as itself |

Keep the arrangement, not only the mark. Treiman et al. (2023) followed 1,868 children in the United States, Australia and Sweden from a ten-word kindergarten spelling test. The quality of their errors, counted in letters added, dropped or substituted, helped predict spelling in later grades even after the number of right answers was allowed for.

One arrangement is one day's evidence and diagnoses nothing. If the same kind of error keeps coming for weeks, show the teacher what you saw.

## Two worked examples: ship and knife

Both examples are invented, not real children. We built each arrangement as EdProcto's page does and ran it through its marking function.

### Ship, for a child of five or six

The adult says: "Ship. The ship sailed out to sea." Suppose the tray holds S, H, I, P and an extra C.

| The child builds | Marked | What it shows |
| --- | --- | --- |
| SHIP | Right | Three sounds, four letters, in order |
| SIHP | Wrong | Every letter known; s and h not yet kept together |
| CHIP | Wrong | ch for sh, two close sounds |
| SIP, one place empty | Wrong | The h left behind: sh not known as a pair |

Ship has four letters, so the slip switch changes nothing: it acts on words of five letters or more.

### Knife, for a child of seven or eight

The adult says: "Knife. Cut the bread with a knife." Suppose the tray holds K, N, I, F, E and an extra C.

| The child builds | Slip off | Slip on | What it shows |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| KNIFE | Right | Right | The word is known |
| NIFE, K in the tray | Wrong | Right | Spelt by sound; the silent letter not learnt |
| NIFEK | Wrong | Wrong | Knows a k belongs, not where |
| KINFE | Wrong | Right | Letters known, order not fixed |
| CNIFE | Wrong | Right | Remembers a letter before the n, not which |

With "A slip still counts" on, three of the four wrong arrangements were marked right. A new Spell it question starts with the switch off: leave it there.

The tiles also gave away five places and a K, so follow a right arrangement with a typed check.

## How does EdProcto build, show and mark a spelling question with letter tiles?

EdProcto is the best tool for a tile spelling quiz from your own word list, because a tap is enough to place a tile, the word stays on the server until the answer is checked, and each arrangement is kept for you to read.

- **Building.** On the dashboard press "New quiz", pick the [Spell it](https://edprocto.com/templates/drag_letter) template and set the kind of quiz to "Study quiz". Type the instruction in "Prompt" and the word, in small letters, under "Accepted answers, one a line": the tiles are made from its first line. "A slip still counts" starts off for this shape. Put the word's tricky part in "Explanation shown to the student afterwards", then press "Take it" to try the tiles.
- **Showing.** Under the line "Tap or drag the letters into place. One letter does not belong." the child sees a row of empty places, one for each letter, and a tray of tiles in capital letters. A space, a hyphen or an apostrophe already stands where it belongs. A tap sends a tile to the first empty place, and a tap on a placed tile sends it back. A tile dragged from the tray takes any place, sending back a tile already there; one dragged from another place swaps with it. A repeated letter has a tile for each time it occurs, an accented letter such as é is one tile, and for a word in another alphabet the extra tile is a second copy of one of its own letters. The tray is never dealt in the order that spells the word.
- **On a phone.** The tiles share one row, 60 pixels square at most: by the page's style sheet, a four-letter word keeps full-size tiles on a phone 375 pixels wide, and a six-letter word's seven tiles come to about 42 pixels each (our sums).
- **Marking.** The word the places read is marked on the server like any typed answer: capitals are ignored, and an empty place closes up, so NIFE with a gap reads "nife". The student's device is sent the tiles and the places, never the word. In a study quiz the child presses "Check": a right arrangement shows "Right.", and a wrong one "Not this time.", the word after "Answer:" and your explanation, with the child's arrangement still above. In an exam the marks are made at hand-in. When children take the quiz with its code, "Open" beside a student on the results page shows the word that child built.
- **On paper.** "Paper" in the builder prints each prompt with a line to write on and an answer key on its own page: the same list as a [handwritten test](https://edprocto.com/guides/how-to-print-a-quiz-with-an-answer-key).

The ready-made spelling [kits](https://edprocto.com/kits) ask in other shapes: Which spelling is right? offers two choices, and Irregular plurals and Irregular verbs take a typed word. A tile quiz is yours to build.

On Free you make ten quizzes a month with the core templates, marked by rule, and the rule-made kits are free without limit. Tutor opens all 111 [templates](https://edprocto.com/templates), and Educator adds the full analysis: see [pricing](https://edprocto.com/pricing).

## Quick questions

### What age are spelling questions with letter tiles for?

About five to eight, while a child is learning to build words from sounds, and any age for a learner of a new alphabet. EdProcto files [Spell it](https://edprocto.com/templates/drag_letter) with its shapes for young learners.

### Should building a word with tiles replace writing it?

No. Tiles show whether the sounds go into letters in order; writing or typing shows whether the word is remembered, and two small studies disagree on whether handwriting practice teaches more.

### Do the tiles give the answer away?

Partly: they show the word's length and its letters, never their order. Use a typed question for a word with a silent or doubled letter.

### Does a muddled arrangement mean my child has dyslexia?

A tile quiz cannot tell you, and this guide gives no advice on it. The NHS (2026) says a useful first step for a parent who thinks their child may have dyslexia is to talk to the school's special educational needs coordinator.

## References

- Abdul Aziz, N. A., Mat Sin, N. S., Batmaz, F., Stone, R., & Chung, P. W. H. (2014). Selection of touch gestures for children's applications: Repeated experiment to increase reliability. *International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 5*(4). [https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2014.050415](https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2014.050415)
- Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1990). Early spelling acquisition: Writing beats the computer. *Journal of Educational Psychology, 82*(1), 159–162. [https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.159](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.159)
- Cunningham, P. M., & Cunningham, J. W. (1992). Making Words: Enhancing the invented spelling-decoding connection. *The Reading Teacher, 46*(2), 106–115. [https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ451254](https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ451254)
- 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](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study)
- National Reading Panel. (2000). *Findings and determinations of the National Reading Panel by topic areas*. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. [https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/findings](https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/findings)
- NHS. (2026). *Dyslexia in children*. [https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dyslexia-in-children/](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dyslexia-in-children/)
- Ouellette, G., & Sénéchal, M. (2008). Pathways to literacy: A study of invented spelling and its role in learning to read. *Child Development, 79*(4), 899–913. [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01166.x](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01166.x)
- Puranik, C., & Apel, K. (2010). Effect of assessment task and letter writing ability on preschool children's spelling performance. *Assessment for Effective Intervention, 36*(1), 46–56. [https://doi.org/10.1177/1534508410380040](https://doi.org/10.1177/1534508410380040)
- Treiman, R., Hulslander, J., Olson, R. K., Samuelsson, S., Elwér, Å., Furnes, B., & Byrne, B. (2023). Predicting later spelling from kindergarten spelling in U.S., Australian, and Swedish children. *Scientific Studies of Reading, 27*(5), 428–442. [https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2023.2186234](https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2023.2186234)
- Vaughn, S., Schumm, J. S., & Gordon, J. (1992). Early spelling acquisition: Does writing really beat the computer? *Learning Disability Quarterly, 15*(3), 223–228. [https://doi.org/10.2307/1510245](https://doi.org/10.2307/1510245)
- Weiser, B., & Mathes, P. (2011). Using encoding instruction to improve the reading and spelling performances of elementary students at risk for literacy difficulties: A best-evidence synthesis. *Review of Educational Research, 81*(2), 170–200. [https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654310396719](https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654310396719)
- Wiley, R. W., & Rapp, B. (2021). The effects of handwriting experience on literacy learning. *Psychological Science, 32*(7), 1086–1103. [https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797621993111](https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797621993111)