Ever pause mid-email to ask, “Wait… is it ‘recommendation' or ‘reccomendation?'” You’ve read that word a thousand times without blinking. But when it’s your turn to produce it, your fingers hesitate, your brain second-guesses, and autocorrect quietly rolls its eyes.
That little stumble isn’t a flaw in you—it’s a clue about how literacy develops. For almost everyone, reading gets there first and spelling follows behind.
We can recognize long, morphologically complex words like recommendation, accommodate, musician, or unintelligible years—even decades—before we can reliably spell every letter.
Why?
Because recognizing a word can succeed with partial information and meaning; spelling demands the exact sequence of graphemes, including the tricky bits English preserves for meaning (recommend → recommendation), history, or position.
In this post, we’ll unpack why that lag is normal (we should expect it!), show charts that map typical “read by” vs. “spell by” ranges, and share short, high-leverage routines that help spelling stay afloat—without slowing reading.
Let’s turn those “Is it two m’s or two c’s?” moments into confident teaching moves.
P.S. It's correctly spelled: “recommendation!”
Why Kids Read Words Before They Can Spell Them
Recognition is easier than recall.
When we recognize words, we are relying on recognition; when we have to spell words, we have to depend on recall. Recall is much more challenging. Think of it as the difference between a multiple choice test and a fill in the blank test. Even when you remember much, the 4 answers may prompt you to take a smart guess.Similarly, reading can succeed with partial information (most letters + context) and/or less lexically robust representations. That is, we may have learned to recognize the word, “desperate” automatically; it is orthographically mapped.
However, the depth of the brain connections might not be deep enough for us to recall whether the ending is “ate,” “ite,” or “et.” Spelling demands the exact sequence of graphemes—no shortcuts. It is a higher bar. Once we can spell a word, we likely have a deeper, more robust knowledge of the word.
One-to-many vs. many-to-one.
When we read we go from print to sound. That is, the system is mostly many-to-one: a given grapheme (or spelling combination) usually maps to one common sound in most contexts. For example, “sh” → /sh/ in ship, wish, shelter. Even flexible teams like ea often default to one or three high-probability sounds (/ē/ in eat, /ay/ in steak or /ĕ/ in bread). That means readers can succeed with knowledge of a few strong regularities.
In contrast, when we spell, we must go from sound to print, and the system flips to one-to-many: a single phoneme may have multiple plausible spellings, and you must pick the right one for the word, position, and morphology. Is the /ee/ sound in “believe” the “ie” spelling or the “ei” spelling? Does accommodate have 2 “c's” or 1? Etc.
This branching is part of what slows spelling.
Why this matters for instruction…
Readers can “get close” and still succeed: If a child maps /ā/ to “ai” mentally while seeing “a_e,” context and other /ā/ options may carry them over the finish line.
Spellers must choose precisely: In contrast, the same child, hearing /ā/, now has to decide ai vs. ay vs. a_e vs. ea, etc.—and position/morphology patterns aren’t fully consolidated yet.
Therefore, if a child can read a word with a phonic pattern you just taught him, but he can't spell it, you may still need to move onto the next phonics or decoding goal. Don't let the spelling challenge derail his reading instruction and opportunities.
Getting the reading ability to stick is the first, important step. With wide reading and further writing and spelling practice, the spelling will eventually come!
English is morpho-phonemic.
English spellings encode meaning units (morphemes) and sounds (i.e., phonemes). That’s why we keep the c in muscle → muscular and the n in hymn → hymnal even when we don’t pronounce those phonemes. Morphemes like –ed, -s/-es, -er/-est, -tion/-sion, re-, un-, dis– carry stable meaning across many words, so spelling preserves them—even when pronunciation shifts (e.g., the vowel stress shift in photograph → photography). This meaning-first stability helps readers recognize families of words and grow their word bank, but it also increases the spelling load, because students must juggle both sound–letter links and morphological consistency.
Bottom line: Students will read complex patterns sooner than they can spell them accurately. That is a normal developmental sequence to expect—not a gap to panic about.
For a deeper dive on how reading practice fuels writing growth (and vice versa), see our overview of the reading–writing connection.
Research Spotlight: Tests Reveal the Reading to Spelling Gap
Recently, researchers examined the discrepancy between the difficulty of words on reading standardized tests and that of standardized spelling tests. They identified the likely last word that the average reader might read correctly from a list of words and contrasted it with the last word that the average speller of the same age group might be able to spell.
In these standardized tests, words that students can typically spell are much more common than words that students can read. A significant gap exists between the number of words that can be read as compared to those that can be spelled for kids under 3rd grade, and it increases in size as students mature.
See the chart above to visual the following data:
At 9.2 years, spelling-test words are about 6× more common in print than reading-test words.
At 10.6 years, about 12× more common.
At 13.2 years, about 31–32× more common.
In other words, students are able to read many many more unusual words as compared to the words that they can spell. Thus, if a student just learned to read a word but can’t spell it yet, that’s normal—and expected. Tests reflect this reality by using harder words for reading than for spelling, especially as kids get older.
Another Lens on the Reading-Spelling Gap
While we may teach many advanced phonics patterns and less frequent spellings for first grade reading instruction, national standards do NOT expect that all of that information will be transferred to spelling.
For instance, I gathered words from 3 norm-referenced tests that an average end of 1st grade speller would know. All but two of these words (95%) were highly regular, such as “and,” “bed,” “can,” “cut,” “home,” “like,” “look,” “name,” “play”. (See chart above.) Students who are reading and spelling well at the end of 1st grade have simply not had enough time and practice yet to read less regular words such as “again,” or “enough” to know how to spell them yet.
Similarly, about 80% of the words that are expected to be spelled at the end of 1st grade belong in the Top 300 Fry word list. This list is significant because it represents about 65% of written English. So few words carry so much responsibility!
The words in the Top 300 Fry word lists are also the information a child needs to know to be able to read mid- to late-first grade transitional texts such as Little Bear, Henry and Mudge, Messy Bessey, and Frog and Toad.
[See a selection below from Frog and Toad where words from the Top 300 are highlighted. Most of the text!]
Many a 1st grade reader will be able to read words outside the Top 300 Fry word list, such as “plane,” or “stood,” or “fact.” But…most good 1st grade spellers will not be able to spell them.
Thus, when we teach the long “a” sound and want to know if our students have learned what we taught them, the best check is reading a list of words or reading the words in connected text–not via a spelling test. The spelling test is a fine quiz to teach students to attend to spellings, but it's not a marker of reading attainment.
The spelling achievement will come later!
Spelling development follows along after reading. And it's almost always lagging behind. We need to provide ample reading and re-reading practice of the phonics information we have taught our students to pave the way for spelling ability.
And when we look at spelling standards for K-2, we can only expect highly regular words and highly frequent words to be spelled correctly. These 2 lenses are essential for filtering whether a spelling test is “fair” or not. Second graders just haven't read the word “boil” enough (since it's not even in the top 1000 most frequent words) to expect it to be spelled correctly.
Likewise, a 1st grade spelling test that prompts with words such as “stuff” or “fuzz,” which are no where close to even the Top 1000 most frequent words, is expecting much much more of their first graders than the typically developing speller shows on nationally normed spelling tests.
Writing experts Steve Graham, Karen Harris, and colleague created the Basic Spelling Vocabulary List which is available here: a handy reference when wondering what is realistic for each grade level. You'll notice the words they chose are tightly connected to high frequency words.
In addition, the well-known LETRS program lists distinct differences between expectations for reading as compared to those for spelling as one can see here. Very few standards on the LETRS list are expected to be mastered for spelling purposes in K-1. For example the final consonant blend such as “nd” or “nk” is not expected to be learned for spelling's sake until 2-3.
So, monitor your reading instruction with reading tests instead of spelling tests.
Monitor your reading instruction with reading tests instead of spelling tests.
Don't Hold Readers Back Based on Their Spelling
Given this significant gap between the words that students can read versus the words that they can spell, our reading instruction should not be hamstrung by students' spelling development. Did you just teach the long “o” sound and its various spellings? The primary diagnostic question is then,
“Can they read /oa/ sound words?”
NOT – “Can they spell them?”
If we wait on students' spelling to catch up to their reading ability we will be stunting their reading growth. Reading development is the lead race horse that dashes out ahead of our spelling skills.
Indeed, how do we learn to spell words?
- First through having read them.
- Second, through having tried to spell them, failed, gotten feedback, and tried again.
Your 1st grader may be able to read the unusually spelled word, “people” already. Great! But don't expect her to learn to spell it until grade 2.
Similarly, your 2nd grader may be able to read the word, “friend,” but don't expect him to be able to spell it until grade 4. Sure, coach him on that tricky “ie” in “friend” when he misspells it in his writing.
But don't be surprised if he still misspells it tomorrow. And don't hold up reading instruction so you can spend several days on teaching the spelling of “friend.”
Our First Goal Is Reading Development
In Reading Simplified, our reading goal leads and our spelling goals follow along later. While we use spelling activities in every Word Work game, we are leaning on spelling's analytical help to:
- support readers attacking unknown words, and
- provide the opportunity for a decoded word to “stick” or to become “orthographically mapped.“
Why reading first?
As we discussed above, reading can succeed with easier recognition + meaning; spelling requires recall and exact letter sequences and tougher choices (one sound → many spellings).
When students meet words again and again in connected text, the spelling begins to “stick” with far less effort.
Thus, prioritizing reading growth first multiplies exposures, which is the fastest route to strong spelling later.
Many Simplifiers go through our one-page scope and sequence (i.e., Streamlined Pathway; see image above) one time through with reading goals emphasized. Once students are fluent or nearly fluent, then it may be appropriate to sweep back through the Pathway with more of a spelling focus this time.
The same activities will serve us for reading and spelling goals, but we may pause more and take more time with specific words when we have a spelling lens on our instructional purposes.
It regularly happens that we are a victim of our own acceleration success here at Reading Simplified. 😉 That is – our approach releases phonics knowledge to students much faster than mainstream phonics programs.
As a result, they begin reading words with advanced phonics patterns (such as the /oa/ spellings in the words: boat, go, show, home, and toe) in the middle or kindergarten or early 1st grade. This is great! Kids are advancing rapidly in their reading and starting to read those beloved early chapter books such as Frog and Toad!
Yet, when they begin to write, they may not know which spelling for /oa/ to place in the word, “boat.” Then the parent or teacher panics, thinking that her student hasn't really learned what she should have.
Not so!
At the risk of beating a dead horse, this is simply the natural order of things. Recognizing the word “boat” in a story is much easier than writing the word “boat” from memory. How can she be expected to spell “boat” if she has only seen the word 2 times in her entire life?
How great would your spelling of words like recommendation, elaborate, committee, stationery or stationary be?
You gotta admit that just a couple of exposures of reading those words did not translate into your spelling ability, right?
And so it will be with our students.
- Reading first.
- Spelling is a tool to help reading.
- Spelling goals later.
Why Kids Read Words Before They Can Spell Them (And What To Do)
Again, kids almost always read a word before they can spell it. That’s not a problem, it’s inevitable.
Reading can succeed with fuzzy memory; spelling demands exact letter choices. So keep your reading goal in the lead, then use short, smart spelling practice to ensure that high frequency patterns and words are being applied.
Here's what to do if you're concerned about spelling:
- Teach your student(s) to read very well.
- Help them to read widely.
- Coach them to Write & Say words that they miss in their writing.
- Bundle these words with common patterns to help them see the relationships.
- Find more ways to help them read widely.
Bottom line: Don’t hold readers back for spelling.
Your Turn! How/When Do You Support Your Students' Spelling?
We'd love to hear from you in the comments below:
