When I was in primary school, I dreaded Fridays because we were usually given a spelling test based on the stories we read during the week or a list of words assigned for memorization. I struggled to remember the words, and invariably my performance was dismal!

While my teachers were well-intentioned, having us study a list of orthographically unrelated words without careful attention to meaning was (and still is) counter to best practices. I quickly forgot most of the words I studied, and as a result, I learned nothing about the English spelling system.

During my first year of teaching, I repeated the same exercises: I gave my students word lists ahead of scheduled spelling tests. After each test, they used a dictionary to self-correct. This was all drill, practice, and repetition, but I thought I was doing the right thing. My former teachers and I didn’t realize that spelling shouldn’t be practiced and tested only. 

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