Fun Ways to Study Spelling Words Using Paper for High School Kids
- High school students often enjoy perfecting their penmanship and developing new styles of writing by hand. Spelling words provide useful material for practicing writing in fun new fonts. For each word, first copy the word at the top of a sheet of paper, paying careful attention to spelling it correctly. Then write the word on several successive lines, trying to use a different style of writing on each line. Options include writing in all caps, bubble letters, cursive, elementary-style block letters, vampire letters or flowery letters.
- One of the hardest parts of high school spelling is remembering to include letters that are silent or don't seem right based on how the word sounds. For example, in the word "camaraderie," a student might have trouble remembering to include the first "a," which can be silent. Writing the word in a way that emphasizes the difficult part can be an effective study method. In this case, a student could make the first "a" in "camaraderie" three times as large as the other letters. This emphasizes the placement of the difficult letter and will help the student remember what it is.
- One fun way to remember how to spell a word is to use the shapes of the letters to create a picture that reminds you of that word. By devising a picture that requires all of the letters to come out correctly, the student need only draw the picture to remember how to spell the word. For example, with the spelling word "jubilation," you could arrange the letters in the shape of a person leaping for joy. The "j" and the "t" have good shapes for the legs, the "i's" can be arms, and the other letters can fill in the body and make the face.
- Many high school spelling words are three or more syllables long, making them difficult to study all at once. One technique for studying is to break the words down into syllables. The student should fold a lined piece of paper into columns, with as many columns as there are syllables in the word with the most syllables. Write each word on a line, breaking it up so each syllable is in a separate column. When reviewing the words, students can start by looking at the first syllable and then guessing how the next syllable is spelled before unfolding the paper to check. Continue this way through each spelling word.