Copying each word ten times is a tradition the research doesn't much support. By the third repetition the hand is writing on its own and the brain has switched off. A child copies elephant ten times and still spells it wrong the next day, because what they practised was hand muscle, not memory for the word. Every technique that works better shares one feature: it forces the brain to pull the word out of memory instead of tracing it off the page.
5 techniques, starting with the basics
- Look-Cover-Write-Check: look at the word, cover it, write it from memory, uncover and check. Those four beats turn copying into genuine recall, and a few rounds do more than ten mindless ones.
- Spell it out loud to a beat: C-A-T, cat! Tap the desk on each letter. Children end up remembering the word as a short chant.
- Letter tiles: write letters on bottle caps or scraps of card and have children arrange them into the word you say. Their hands hold it and their eyes sort it.
- Break it into chunks: cut long words into pieces, bas-ket-ball. Children spell one chunk at a time and join them up, and long words stop being frightening.
- Flower hangman: children guess one letter at a time, and every wrong guess adds another petal to your drawing. It's the one game that leaves a whole class silent, hanging on the next letter.
How to choose the words you practise
Work on 5 to 8 words at a time, all from the same topic you've just taught. Don't throw unrelated topics into one list. Mix words that can be sounded out (cat, red) with words that simply have to be learnt (the, said), and keep the sounded out words in the majority. Phonics then stays a child's main tool and memorising is reserved for the exceptions, which is far less exhausting than treating every word as something to memorise.