100 6th-8th Grade Spelling Words Your Middle Schooler Needs To Know
This compilation of sixth-eighth grade spelling words is a summary of the top words a child in middle school should know. In addition to the word list, I have also listed practice spelling activities suitable for tweens and teens.
100 Top Words For Spelling Practice: 6th-8th Grade
- accept
- ancient
- audience
- beliefs
- blown
- calendar
- caution
- ceiling
- combination
- community
- constitution
- contagious
- creature
- decision
- descendant
- disagreement
- distributed
- earliest
- echoes
- encouragement
- envelope
- equator
- especially
- excitement
- exercise
- experience
- familiar
- fierce
- forgiveness
- freight
- frighten
- gallon
- gesture
- graduation
- grief
- halves
- headache
- heroes
- hyphen
- ignore
- imagination
- immediate
- improvement
- ingredient
- inquire
- instruction
- invisible
- invitation
- jealous
- knowledge
- lawyer
- league
- listening
- location
- manner
- manor
- marriage
- meant
- mechanic
- medicine
- mixture
- muscle
- museum
- musician
- myth
- nationality
- noticeable
- occur
- official
- operate
- original
- patient
- penguin
- personal
- persuade
- physical
- pollution
- potatoes
- purchase
- quote
- ratio
- realize
- recycle
- referred
- rehearse
- relief
- relieve
- requirement
- rescue
- resources
- safety
- scientific
- scissors
- separately
- strength
- suggestion
- telephone
- threat
- unbelievable
- vegetable
The Science Of Learning To Spell
While rote memorization was a large part of how most of us learned to spell, the reality is that most of the process of spelling has to do with memorization and “sounding it out”.
In English, there are 26 letters, 44 sounds, and 250 or more different ways to spell those sounds. That means phonetic spelling will only get kids so far. Yet how many times have parents uttered “sound it out” to a child asking how to spell a word?
Mary Smart
Because of this, a varied approach is even more important as children get older.
Spelling Practice Activities For Older Children
Teaching spelling to older learners doesn’t have to be boring or routine. In fact, part of what makes teaching middle school so rewarding is the growing independence and desire on the part of our students to learn to spell proficiently. The current culture of social media and text messaging creates a natural desire and willingness to learn.
Memorization, exposure and direct instruction combined with interesting and age appropriate practice activities create the most successful outcomes for middle schoolers. My goal in teaching spelling to older learners is to incorporate as much real life, interest-led learning practice as possible.
For example, these spelling activities are perfect for 6th-8th graders:
- Solving Puzzles (think Wordle with spelling words)
- Cracking Codes
- Texting spelling words to one another
- Writing sample social media captions using 5 or more spelling words.
For more ideas and inspiration, take a look at my list of activities in Practicing Spelling With An Older Learner {includes a weekly lesson plan recap}.