The toughest spelling bee competition words for grades K–7, curated from competitive word lists. Filter by grade and difficulty, then print a clean word list for home practice or classroom use.
Free practice tools for every grade level
Filter the words by your child's or student's grade and difficulty level. Click on the words to Print / Save as PDF. Choose Save as PDF in your browser's print dialog to create a neat and clean printable file. No email or sign-up required!
For home practice with a child, cover up a word and have the child read it to you and then have them spell it out for you. For classroom use, the 3-column word list will print out on letter-size paper with about 50–80 words per page.
The 500 words in this set were chosen from across our grade-level spelling bee tools, including lists of words that appear in competitive spelling bee rounds and in the vocabulary that school districts have determined students should learn. The words flagged as Hard appear with high frequency in actual competition rounds at each grade level because they contain difficult letter combinations, roots from Latin, and other unusual structures.
Browse by grade: Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th.
Under "Print / Save as PDF" at the bottom of your browser window, change your printer to "Save as PDF". On a Mac, this can be done from File → Print, then from the PDF dropdown in the lower left corner of the print dialog box, select "Save as PDF". On a PC, select "Microsoft Print to PDF" as your printer.
The following are model lists of competitive words for spelling bees at various grade levels. (Note: The official list of words for Scripps spelling bees is never released prior to the time of the competition. The following lists were cobbled together from school district word lists, reports of past spelling bee competitions, and standards for various grade levels and their corresponding vocabularies.)
15 words per 10–15 minute session is optimal for most students. Short daily sessions are better than long sessions held at irregular times. Increase to 25–30 words per session in the last week before the competition, using the Hard words for the student's grade level.
Yes, totally free for you to use with your students. Filter the words by your students' grade, print and distribute them as you see fit. The words are printed in a format that's ready to hand out to your students in the classroom. If your school is on a district word list, you can use the filters to show the student the words that are most likely to be used in their local competition.