For Teachers: The Words Educators Misspell on the Board

It happens in the middle of a good lesson. You turn to the board, write "seperate" in large confident letters, and a hand goes up in the third row. "Isn't there an a in the middle?" There is. You feel the heat rise up your neck, you laugh it off, and for the rest of the day some part of your brain keeps replaying it.

If that has happened to you, you are in large company, although almost nobody says so out loud. Teachers are expected to be walking dictionaries, yet most were never taught spelling beyond primary school, and none of them were trained to spell under the particular pressure of a whiteboard, a marker and thirty pairs of eyes. The result is a quiet professional anxiety that is out of all proportion to the problem.

This article is meant to shrink it. It explains why good teachers misspell words they know, lists the education and subject words that go wrong most often, offers a few habits for checking before you write, and ends with a private routine that takes ten minutes a few times a week.

Why people who teach spelling still misspell

The first reason is simple: reading and spelling are different skills. You read "curriculum" a hundred times a term, and every time your brain recognizes it in a fraction of a second. Recognition is easy, because the word is in front of you. Writing it on a blank board asks for recall, which means rebuilding the word from memory with no prompt, and that is a far harder task. A lifetime of fluent reading can leave recall surprisingly thin.

The second is the setting. When you write on the board, you are also talking, watching the room, keeping an eye on the student who is about to tip his chair, and thinking about the next question. Spelling is being done with whatever attention is left over, on a vertical surface, with a tool that has no spell-checker. Most people's spelling gets worse under split attention, and teachers spend much of the day in it.

The third is a curious effect of expertise. The education researchers Mitchell Nathan and Anthony Petrosino described an expert blind spot: the more fluent you become in a subject, the harder it is to see what is difficult about it. Applied to spelling, it means that words you use every day stop feeling like things that could go wrong, so you stop checking them.

Finally, there is the odd moment when a perfectly ordinary word suddenly looks wrong. You write "which" and stare at it until it seems like a string of random letters. In a 2021 study, Chris Moulin and his colleagues asked people to write the same word over and over, and most of them reported this feeling of strangeness, known as jamais vu, after a surprisingly short time. If a familiar word dissolves while you are looking at it, your spelling has not failed. Your attention has simply saturated.

The words that catch educators

Some words go wrong for teachers far more often than for the general public, simply because teachers write them far more often. The table gives the ones that come up again and again, with the trap in each and a quick way to remember it.

Beyond the table, watch the words that school life puts on the board every week: "February" and "Wednesday", both with letters nobody says; "vocabulary", and "grammar", which drifts toward "grammer" under pressure; "achievement" and "receive", the classic i and e pair; and "independent" and "environment", each hiding a letter that careful speech drops. Homophones catch teachers exactly as they catch everyone else, so "their" and "there", "its" and "it's", and "affect" and "effect" deserve a second look. Our guide to homophones that confuse everyone covers the full set.

Principal or principle

This pair deserves its own section, because it appears in almost every newsletter and staff email.

The person who runs the school is the principal. "Principal" is also the adjective meaning main or most important, as in "the principal reason". A principle is a rule or a belief: "the principles of good assessment", "a woman of principle".

So "the principal's principal concern is a matter of principle" is correct, if not elegant. The old memory aid still works: the principal is your pal, and a principle is a rule, and both "principle" and "rule" end in le.

Subject words that sit in wait

Every subject has its own traps, and they tend to be words the specialist has used so often that they no longer look risky.

In math it is geometry that bites: "parallel" (one r, two l's, then one l), "isosceles", "perpendicular", "symmetry" and "circumference". Science has "Fahrenheit", "hypothesis" and its plural "hypotheses", "chlorophyll" and "photosynthesis". English teachers write "onomatopoeia", "alliteration", "rhythm" and "simile" on a daily basis, and "rhythm", which has no a, e, i, o or u at all, trips up adults in every profession.

Humanities teachers meet "Mediterranean", with one d and two r's, "government" with the n that speech drops, "parliament" with its silent i, "Renaissance" and "millennium", which has two l's and two n's. Modern languages teachers have perhaps the hardest job of all, because every day they move between two spelling systems, and cognates like "address" (English, two d's) and "adresse" (French, one) invite interference.

Make a short list of the ten words from your own subject that you most often hesitate over. You already know which they are.

Checking before the word reaches the board

The best way to avoid a mistake on the board is to decide the spelling before you get there. A few small habits make most errors disappear.

Put key vocabulary into your plan. If a lesson introduces "photosynthesis", the word should be written, correctly, in your notes or on a slide before the lesson starts. When you come to it in front of the class, you are copying rather than recalling, and copying is much safer.

Keep a small card of your own trouble words by the board, or tuck them into the back of your planner. Nobody needs to know what it is.

Use slides for long technical terms, but do not trust the spell-checker blindly. It will catch "seperate" and miss "principle" where you meant "principal", along with every other homophone. Read slides aloud once before a lesson, slowly, and listen for words that do not fit their sentence.

When you are unsure mid-lesson, pause. Three seconds of looking at a word is invisible to a class. If you are still unsure, ask the students to check it for you in a dictionary, and you have turned a moment of doubt into a lesson.

When a student catches your mistake

It will happen, however careful you are, so it is worth deciding in advance how you want it to go.

The best response is the plainest one. Thank the student, check the word together, correct it, and move on. "You're right, well spotted. Let's check. Yes, it's 'separate', with an a in the middle, and here is how I will remember it." That takes twenty seconds and teaches more than the original lesson might have.

It teaches that adults make mistakes and fix them without drama. It shows that checking is a normal, grown-up thing to do rather than a sign of failure. And it rewards the student for paying close attention, which is exactly the behavior you want more of. Children who see errors handled calmly become calmer about their own, and that matters a great deal when you later ask them to take feedback on their writing. Our guide to giving spelling feedback that teaches builds on the same idea.

What does not work is covering up. Rubbing the word out quickly and pretending nothing happened tells the class that mistakes are shameful, which is the opposite of what you teach the rest of the day.

Can a teacher improve their own spelling?

Yes, and faster than most people expect, because the problem is almost never a general weakness. It is a specific list of words, often thirty or forty, that were never properly learned and have been guessed at confidently for years.

The research on spelling instruction is encouraging at every age. A 2014 review by Steve Graham and Tanya Santangelo found that explicit spelling teaching improved spelling across the ages studied, and nothing about the underlying memory science stops working in adulthood. The two techniques that help most are the same ones that work for students: retrieving a word from memory rather than looking at it again, and spreading practice across days rather than cramming it. Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke's 2006 study remains the classic demonstration of the first. A 2006 review by Nicholas Cepeda and his colleagues pulled together the evidence for the second.

If you teach spelling to others, you may also find that working on your own words sharpens your teaching. The research on how spelling should be taught looks rather different once you have been the learner again.

A private ten-minute routine

This routine takes about ten minutes, three or four times a week, and nobody else needs to know you are doing it.

1. For two weeks, keep a note of every word you hesitate over, correct, or look up, in emails, reports, planning and on the board.
2. Add the words from the table above that you are not completely sure of.
3. Have each word said to you, then write or type it from memory without looking.
4. Check it letter by letter. For each miss, find the one spot that went wrong and a reason or hook for it.
5. Bring missed words back the next day, then three days later, then a week later.

The collecting in step one is the most important part. A published list of commonly misspelled words is useful, but your own list is the one that will change what appears on your board. If you would rather have the dictation and the spacing handled for you, Spelling.School does both in private, with no leaderboards and nothing for colleagues to see.

What to do next

Tonight, write down five words you have hesitated over this term. Most teachers can do this in under a minute, which tells you something. Check each one, find the part that goes wrong, and practice those five from memory over the next week.

Then start the two-week collection. By the end of the term you will have dealt with the words that were causing most of your doubt, and you will be less likely to think about the board at all. For a wider view of the mistakes that undermine professional writing, see the spelling mistakes that look unprofessional at work.

Questions people ask

What words do teachers misspell most?

The words teachers misspell most are usually the ones they write most often: separate, definitely, necessary, accommodate, occasion, assessment, curriculum and its plural curricula, and pronunciation. Principal and principle are frequently confused in newsletters and emails. Subject words such as parallel, rhythm, Fahrenheit and millennium also go wrong, especially on the board, where there is no spell-checker and attention is split.

Is it principal or principle for a school head?

The head of a school is the principal. Principal also means main, as in the principal reason. A principle is a rule or belief, as in the principles of good teaching. A simple way to remember it is that the principal is your pal, while principle and rule both end in le.

How do I avoid spelling mistakes on the whiteboard?

Decide spellings before the lesson, not during it. Write key vocabulary correctly in your plan or on a slide so you are copying rather than recalling at the board. Keep a small card of your own trouble words nearby, and pause for a few seconds when you are unsure. Slides help with long terms, but a spell-checker will not catch homophones, so read them through before class.

Can a teacher improve their own spelling?

Yes. Adult spelling problems are usually a specific list of a few dozen words rather than a general weakness, so they respond well to targeted practice. The most effective method is to write each word from memory rather than reading it, check it letter by letter, and review missed words after a day, a few days and a week. Ten minutes a few times a week is enough to see a real change within a month or two.

What should I do if a student catches my spelling mistake?

Thank the student, check the word together, correct it, and carry on. Handling the mistake calmly shows the class that adults make errors and fix them, that checking is normal, and that careful attention is valued. Covering the mistake up sends the opposite message and tends to make students more anxious about their own errors.

Why does a word suddenly look wrong when I write it on the board?

Staring at or repeating a familiar word can make it seem strange, an effect researchers call jamais vu or semantic satiation. In a 2021 study, most people who wrote the same word repeatedly reported this feeling after a surprisingly short time. It is a quirk of attention, not a sign that your spelling has failed. Look away for a moment, then check the word against a reliable source if you are still unsure.

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