Going Beyond “Challenge Words” In Spelling

Many students blow past grade-level spelling and vocabulary at a pretty young age. A common technique is to “challenge” them with harder and harder and increasingly obscure words.

But I saw something… disturbing in my classroom.

Great spellers were purposefully bombing the spelling pre-test!

Why?

Well, it turns out that, to my students, those “Challenge Words” should have been labeled “Punishment Words.”

Be Careful With “Challenging”

It’s a perfect example of why just aiming for “challenging” can be a problem.

I realized: if I tell you I had a challenging day because my job is really challenging now thanks to a challenging new co-worker… none of that is good, right?

So, rather than just trying to find challenging words, I tried to find interesting words. I want to intrigue my students and let their curiosity naturally pull them in.

Here’s what that might look like with spelling and vocab.

Three Homograph Activities

Homographs became one of my go-tos. These are words that look the same, but have different meanings – and perhaps different pronunciations.

The word “subject” is a homograph. It has three different definitions with two different pronunciations. It’s not a “challenging” word to spell, but its multiple meanings offer fun ambiguity and complexity.

  1. A person under authority, like a subject of a monarch.
  2. A topic, like the subject of an essay.
  3. To cause someone to experience something, like subjecting you to pain.

Let’s look at three activities that build on homographs.

1. Matching Definitions

This is by far my favorite use of homographs: create a two-column matching activity, but use only definitions – no words.

Here’s an example:

  1. To get a disease from someone.
  2. A bird symbolizing peace.
  3. To rip.
  4. A small representation of a larger object.
  5. A serious injury.
  1. A drop of sadness.
  2. To show off fashionable clothes.
  3. A signed, legal agreement.
  4. The past tense of jumping into some water.
  5. The past tense of wrapping string around an object.

Students must match the two definitions that go with the same homograph. 2 and D go together since their word is “dove.” 3 and A both go with the word “tear.” The remaining words are contract, wound, and model.

I’ve got a whole series of these at Byrdseed.TV.

You could even hand this task over to students to build. Give them five homographs and ask them to create the two-column form. Writing the definitions are tricky (but fun) since you can’t give too much away.

2. Create a Product

Students can advertise a product that incorporates multiple meanings of a word:

  • A river bank bank: a convenient place for fish to save their money.
  • A book booker: automatically calls the library to reserve your favorite novels.
  • A compressible compress: a bandage that folds up very small.

3. Use Every Meaning

Finally, students can use a word’s multiple meanings in a sentence or paragraph:

Evil King Byrd liked to subject his subjects to lectures about his favorite subject: the history of the toothpick.

Increase the complexity by making it a requirement to include multiple meanings of three different homographs in one paragraph. Let’s try: duck, bank, and dove.

The skateboarding dove banked her skateboard off a river bank, ducked into a spin, and then dove under the water, barely missing a duck.

Naturally, students can create an illustration to go along with their writing and their products.

Hopefully, these are helpful examples of tasks that are complex but not tedious; challenging but still fun.

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