Why do upper grade students still misspell basic words like their?
Even older students and high achievers routinely misspell simple words like their, there, and fridge because early errors go uncorrected out of fear of discouraging them. This lack of intervention allows spelling habits to deteriorate year after year, leaving high school and AP students unable to rely on basic orthography.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Using basic phonics practice and nonsense words
- 2Providing firm, consistent, loving corrections
- 3Relying on spellcheck and technology
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Upper elementary reading teacher here🙋🏼♀️ I just assessed 25 of my approx. 32 students I’ll be working with this year to get a sense of what lessons I’ll be starting on, and only 2 of them correctly spelled the word “their”……”source ↗
“I teach 8th graders, most of whom "qualify as gifted and talented" and they don't have a clue how to spell "their" either”source ↗
“My Senior year AP student filled out a beginning of the year questionnaire with "frige" and "edgjucate"”source ↗
“Seems like every year it gets a bit worse with the basic spelling stuff, my niece in 4th grade writes "there" for everything and nobody corrects it because they dont want to discourage her”source ↗
“Most of my juniors don’t know how to do it either”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2What to do when you can't understand a student's speech impediment
- 5Why won't students do the reading assignments?
- 2How to grade unreadable student handwriting
- 24Why are students coming to class missing basic foundational skills?
- 2How to help kids understand what test questions are asking
- 2Why do students just copy worksheet text instead of answering?