Spelling Bee Quizzes

for Fun Spelling Bee practice

You can use many different types of spelling bee quizzes to help your students prepare for upcoming spelling competitions. Here are a few great options for you to try this week for both WRITTEN and ORAL quizzes.

Written Quizzes

Here are two very different spelling bee quizzes to try.  It's good to use a variety of methods to keep your students on their toes. They may even have a bit of fun! 

1) Write two spellings of the same word on the board. (See my sample words below.) Ask students to write only the correct spellings on their papers. To check their work, ask students to come to the board to erase the wrong answer. See if students agree. Again, any missed words should be written in students' personal word list. 

Here are are sample word lists, written for three different grade levels. Create more of your own.

2) Announce a surprise dictionary quiz. Ask students to number a half-sheet of paper from 1 to 10.  Pull a classroom dictionary from the shelf and open it to a random page. Quickly,  but carefully,  scan the left and right pages and choose ten words that students may or may not know. Choose some words that  they are likely to know and few that they probably don't know. Call out those ten words. Then have each student check his/her own paper for the right answers. Students should record the correct spelling of any words they missed in their person spelling word lists.

Variation: Choose a student to act as the "teacher" for the quiz above.

Round Robin Oral Quiz

Here's a friendly competition, which is especially good for review days. This can be adjusted if your students are, or are not, of similar spelling abilities so be sure to read to the end of these instructions.

1) Choose a student sitting in a front corner seat. Ask this person to stand next to the student directly behind him/her. 

2) Call out a spelling word. It can be a review word or a new word.

3) The two students race to call out the correct spelling of the word. The speller who is first moves on to the student sitting behind the second speller. 

4) The teacher calls out a new word for the previous winner to spell as s/he competes against the student in the new seat.

5) The game continues in this fashion with the winner of each round always moving to the student seating in the next seat. The student who "loses" the round sits in his/her seat.

6.) You may wish to offer a small reward or prize to anyone who can "win" 5 or more seats. 

7) Adjust the difficulty of the words according to the spellers. For example, if two strong spellers are up against each other, give them a very difficult word to spell. If a strong speller is up against a weak speller, choose a much simpler word, so BOTH spellers have a more even shot at getting the word right. 

Oral "Pop" Quiz

This kind of spelling bee quiz is super-simple, and you can do it when you have only a few minutes of spare time during the school day. Here's how it works:

1) Choose a list of spelling words from your own curriculum, from one of my lists, or  from a dictionary. 

2) While students are all seated, call on any one  student and pronounce the word you'd like him/her to spell.

3) If the word is spelled correctly, move on to another student with a new spelling word.  If the word is spelled incorrectly, ask all students to write that word in their personal spelling lists while you spell it correctly aloud.

4) Do this activity frequently, so students become used to spelling words aloud, without knowing what words they'll be asked.

More Spelling Bee Quizzes & Games

You may also want to try these online spelling bee quizzes:

Choose the Correct Word - Read three spelling words and identify the one that's spelled correctly. This is a great assortment of spelling words for elementary age students.  Here's another spelling bee game with a different set of words.

Kids will enjoy practicing for spelling bees when you let them try one of our classroom spelling word games.

Step Up is a fun spelling bee team game. When all the team members spell correctly, the team moves ahead. It can be used with any set of spelling bee words and can be used with most grades.

Silent Spelling Bee Games  It's a whole different game when students are working silently! Yes, it's possible to spell silently -- with the help of some dry-erase boards, or even paper and pencil! I think you'll really like these. Be sure to try both variations. 

Ann Richmond Fisher is a longtime published educational writer, a former classroom teacher and a former homeschool teacher. Ann's spelling bee resources, graded spelling word lists, spelling games, worksheets, and other language arts resources have become respected around the globe since she launched Spelling-Words-Well in 2010.

Ann is also the creator of www.word-game-world.com.

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