7th Grade Spelling Words

Each list has up to thirty words and is available as a hangman game and a printable worksheet with answer key. The shorter lists, such as cian, are short because few common words fit. The difficulty score beside each word shows how hard a typical player finds it to guess, which helps you build a set that starts easy and finishes hard.

The lists fall into three groups. Suffixes that build nouns about people and states: Words Ending in Ship and Hood, Words Ending in Ist and Words Ending in Cian. Suffixes that build verbs: Words Ending in Ify and Words Ending in Ize. Endings and prefixes that need careful attention: Words Ending in Cial and Tial and Words With the Prefix Ex.

The year also revisits morphology from earlier grades. Students can connect ist with the ism list from sixth grade, ize with the sound-alike ise, and ex with the prefix lists they have already seen. Many words on these lists change at the join (simple becomes simplify, memory becomes memorize), so the key skill is watching what happens to the last letter of the base.

A seventh grade routine can be built around one suffix per week. Monday: show the suffix and ask students to find the base in ten words. Tuesday: hangman as a class, with the suffix revealed. Wednesday: print the worksheet and have students write the base next to each word, noting any letter that changed. Thursday: students create five new words using the suffix and check them. Friday: a short dictation of ten words and one explanation sentence.

For students who find spelling difficult, start each session by sorting the words into those that change at the join and those that do not, which cuts the memory load. For strong spellers, challenge them to write a paragraph using at least six words from the week's list.