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Why can my child spell a word at home but not in the test?

· 7 min read

A closed navy exercise book, a sharpened pencil and a plain white kitchen timer beside a blank ruled notepad on a pale wooden table.

A child who spells a word correctly at home but misses it in the test may have practised with the word in view, which differs from recalling it. Memory research suggests that looking at material makes learners feel more confident than they have grounds to be, while trying to recall it helps later. Practice that includes writing the word from memory is closer to what a test asks.

Key takeaways

  • In experiments with word pairs, learners overestimated how well they would remember when the answer was in front of them as they judged.
  • In a 2006 study, students who read a passage again felt more confident than students who tried to recall it, but they remembered less after two days and after one week.
  • A 2013 review of ten learning techniques rated practice testing among the most useful, and rereading and highlighting as low in usefulness.
  • The national curriculum for England lists writing simple dictated sentences from memory in Years 1, 2, 3 and 4, so writing from memory is a reasonable thing to practise.

Why does a child get a word right at home and wrong in the test?

A child can get a word right at home and wrong in the test because the two situations ask for different things. At home, the word is often written on a list, a card or a screen, and the child can see it. In the test, the child hears the word and has to produce the spelling with nothing in front of them.

Research on how people judge their own learning points to a reason this gap can go unnoticed. In a 2005 paper, Koriat and Bjork described “illusions of competence”, which are overestimates of how well a person will perform on a later memory test. They argue these arise when a person judges their learning while the answer is still visible, because it is hard to set aside what you currently know and imagine what you will know without the prompt. The experiments used pairs of words, not spellings, so the paper shows the pattern in general terms and does not tell us what happens with a particular child and a particular list.

Does looking at a word again help it stick?

Looking at a word again can make a child feel surer of it without making the word more likely to be remembered later. The clearest evidence is a pair of experiments published in 2006 by Roediger and Karpicke. Students read prose passages and then either read them again or took a recall test without feedback. After five minutes, rereading produced better recall. After two days and after one week, the students who had been tested remembered substantially more, even though rereading had left them more confident.

These were university students and passages of prose. They were not children learning spellings. The finding is still relevant to a parent because it describes the same trap: a feeling of familiarity that fades faster than the confidence it produces.

A wider review reached a similar view. Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) assessed ten learning techniques and, according to the Association for Psychological Science, rated practice testing and distributed practice as the most useful. Rereading and highlighting received low utility ratings.

What is a test actually asking a child to do?

A spelling test asks a child to produce a word from memory rather than recognise it on a page. Formats vary between schools, so your child's teacher is the person to ask what happens in the room.

The national curriculum for England treats writing from memory as a skill worth practising. The English programmes of study (September 2013) list writing simple sentences from memory, dictated by the teacher, among the spelling requirements for Year 1, Year 2 and Years 3 and 4. For Year 1, the notes say pupils need much more rehearsal of individual words for spelling than for reading. The same document says that most people read words more accurately than they spell them.

That last point is a useful one for a parent. A child can recognise a word comfortably and still find it hard to produce.

Does it matter when the practice happens?

Timing matters because a word that a child spells correctly straight after studying it is weaker evidence than a word spelled correctly on another day. In the Roediger and Karpicke experiments, the advantage of rereading appeared only at the five minute test, and by the two day test the students who had been tested were ahead.

Those experiments measured prose recall and did not examine spelling, so they cannot say how many days apart a parent should space practice. What they do show is that a correct answer given minutes after studying is weak evidence of what will be there on Friday morning.

What can a parent do differently this week?

A parent can change one thing without adding time: make some of the practice a test. These suggestions follow from the research above, and none of them is a method with proven results for spelling.

  • Cover the word and have the child write it from memory before looking, then check it. This is the core of look, cover, write, check, and the covering is the step that turns looking into recalling.
  • Say the word aloud, or ask the child to say it first, and have them write it with the list out of sight. That is closer to a test that is read out.
  • Come back to the same words on a different day and write them again from memory, before looking at the list. A word that is right on three separate days gives more reason for confidence than one that is right once. You can read how this idea works in how spelling sticks.
  • Keep each session short and finish on a correct word, so that practice stays something a child will do again tomorrow.

Could something other than practice method be involved?

Something other than practice method could be involved, and the sources reviewed for this post do not address it. A child might find a test situation different from the kitchen table for reasons of their own. If your child regularly spells words well at home and badly at school across several weeks, the teacher can tell you what happens in the test and whether other support is worth considering. The school's own guidance on spelling homework is a better guide than anything general.

FAQ

Why does my child know the words at home but fail the test?

The word may have been in view during practice, which is easier than writing it with nothing to look at. Experiments on memory find that people judging their learning with the answer visible tend to overestimate what they will recall. Those experiments used word pairs, not spellings.

Is rereading a spelling list a good way to practise?

The research reviewed here suggests it is weaker than trying to recall. In a 2006 experiment, students who tested themselves remembered more after two days and one week than students who reread, although the rereaders felt more confident. The students were adults reading prose.

Should my child practise on the night before the test?

The sources reviewed here do not say what is best on the night before. They do suggest that practice on other days adds something, because a word spelled correctly only minutes after studying is weaker evidence of learning than the same word spelled correctly on another day.

What does the national curriculum say about spelling from memory?

The English programmes of study (September 2013) list writing simple sentences from memory, dictated by the teacher, for Years 1 to 4. They do not set how a school should run its weekly test.

Spelling Nest counts a word as mastered only when it has been spelled from sound, first time, with no clues, on three different days, and you can find it at spellingnest.co.uk/app.

Sources

Practice that actually happens.

Add this week's list, hand over the tablet, and see what has stuck before the test rather than after it. Alongside writing the words out by hand, not instead of it.

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