Misspelled Words – Fifth Grade

Children tend to misspell the same words; a small number of words make up most of the spelling errors. Our school provided us with a fifth grade word list containing frequently misspelled words.

Frequently Misspelled Words

The following 67 words are frequently spelled incorrectly by young students.

absence	criticize	loose	recommend
ache	desert	maneuver	restaurant
accomplish	dessert	necessary	rough
across	eligible	nickel	scheme
all right	embarrass	ninety	separate
already	especially	noticeable	sincerely
although	explanation	occasion	surprise
amateur	February	occurrence	thorough
argue	fiery	opinion	though
athlete	forty	parallel	thought
awkward	fourth	peculiar	through
because	government	privilege	tragedy
beneficial	grateful	probably	truly
calendar	harass	quiet	weigh
category	humorous	quit	weird
changeable	interrupt	quite	women
cousin	invisible	receive

Source: Montgomery County Public Schools, MD (Adapted from the Dolch 500 word list, Pat Cunningham’s Month by Month Phonics, and Fry and Kress’ Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists.)

Embarrassingly, I misspelled a few of these words while generating this table – yikes! Also, here’s a few tricks I use to remember some of these tricky words:

• alright vs. all right – scholars prefer two words to one so just remember to keep it safe and separate
• athlete- make sure you do not add an “e” and say “athelete”
• dessert vs. desert – dessert has one more S – just like you always want 1 more dessert
• receive – the golden rule “I” before “e” except after “c”
• probably – try to pronounce the word correctly, do not say, “probly”
• government – another one that people often pronounce incorrectly, make sure you say the “n”

Help your child master these words, print out this list and review each word. Consider exaggerating each syllable so a child can hear the individual components of the word. Use index cards and spelling bees can be another way to help a child overcome these common spelling errors and learn how to spell these spelling demons.