= Partner Site4th Grade Spelling Words
Welcome to our section for 4th Grade Spelling Words! This spelling program consists of 36 weeks of structured lessons, each focusing on specific phonetic patterns, blends, or rules and phonics skills. The program begins with vowel and consonant pattern review in Weeks 1-6, followed by syllable division review in Weeks 7-9. Weeks 10-12 cover words ending in V or J sounds, while Weeks 13-15 deal with suffix additions. Weeks 16-21 focus on possessives, irregular past form, and plurals. In Weeks 22-27, students learn about compound words and Latin or Greek roots, and in Weeks 28-33, they cover less common prefixes and suffixes. The program concludes with lessons on “schwa” vowel sound words in Weeks 34-36.
You’ll find printable lists below for each week. If you’re working on 4th grade spelling words with your child at home, consider trying a few fun activities to reinforce learning. For example, you might try the following:
Flash Cards: This is always a great way to reinforce learning. Write each word on a flash card, or have your child write the words. Then, have your child spell each word out loud. If your child spelled the word correctly, put the card in a “correct” pile. If they spelled it incorrectly, put the card in an “incorrect” pile. Rinse and repeat!
Word Scramble: Rearrange the letters of each 4th grade spelling word and have your child unscramble them.
Word Hunt: Ask your child to find the spelling words in a magazine, book, or online. This will help your child to recognize the words and also reinforce their spelling skills.
First 9 Weeks (1-9) Printable Word Lists
Week 1 Spelling List
The spelling list for week 1 focuses on vowel pattern view for long vowels, such as: repaid, knead, obey, and fruit. Bonus words are: mistletoe, nineteen, and brainstem.
Week 2 Spelling List
Week 2 focuses on diphthongs, such as: autumn, voice, employ, and because. Bonus words are: laundromat, daughter, and annoyed.
Week 3 Spelling List
Week 3 focuses on R-controlled vowels, such as: carport, marbles, spider, and before. Bonus words are: furniture, figured, and surprising.
Week 4 Spelling List
Week 4 focuses on blends and digraphs, such as: tract, whooped, scent, and sixty. Bonus words are: traction, phobia, and waft.
Week 5 Spelling List
Week 5 focuses on "mb" and "gn" words, such as: sign, thumbed, climbing, and assignment. Bonus words are: limbic, clamber, and redesign.
Week 6 Spelling List
Week 6 focuses on "kn" and "wr" consonant patterns, such as: wrong, knock, knack, and wreath. Bonus words are: knapsack, wrinkled, and knowingly.
Week 7 Spelling List
Week 7 focuses on short and long VccV words, such as: reflex, zebra, velvet, and sudden. Bonus words are: putrid, numbered, objection.
Week 8 Spelling List
Week 8 focuses on short and long VCV words, such as: apex, lemon, novel, and secret. Bonus words are: propeller, basically, and hazardous.
Week 9 Spelling List
Week 9 focuses on syllable division, such as: monster, landlord, instruct, and conflict. Bonus words are: technology and construction.
Second 9 Weeks (10-18) Printable Word Lists
Week 10 Spelling List
Week 10 focuses on words ending in "-ve" or "-ves", such as: glove, wave, grave, and knives. Bonus words are: relative, achieve, and swerve.
Week 11 Spelling List
Week 11 focuses on "-dge" ending words, such as: badge, edge, fridge, and smudge. Bonus words are: dredge, hedgehog, and privilege.
Week 12 Spelling List
Week 12 focuses on "j" and "v" ending sounds, such as: strive, village, fledge, and nerve. Bonus words: creative, objective, and stooge.
Week 13 Spelling List
Week 13 focuses on double consonants, such as: kitted, shopped, chopping, and planning. Bonus words are: rewrapped, transferring, and marvelling.
Week 14 Spelling List
Week 14 focuses on silent "e" words, such as: scathed, deciding, inviting, and grating. Bonus words are: undecided, reciting, and dictated.
Week 15 Spelling List
Week 15 focuses on "y to i" suffix rules, such as: tried, prettier, carrier, and friendlier. Bonus words are: beautiful, earliest, and libraries.
Week 16 Spelling List
Week 16 focuses on possessives, such as: mother's, child's, America's, and painter's. Bonus words are: octopus', moose's, and cactus'.
Week 17 Spelling List
Week 17 focuses on plurals, such as: heroes, wolves, sheep, and countries. Bonus words are: moose, potatoes, and roofs.
Fourth Grade Spelling Words Week 18-F-image
Third 9 Weeks (19-27) Printable Word Lists
Week 19 Spelling List
Week 19 focuses on compound words, such as: skylight, earache, afternoon, and elsewhere. Bonus words are: starstruck, authorship, and bookkeeper.
Week 20 Spelling List
Week 20 focuses on hyphenated compound words, such as: lip-sync, one-up, blow-dry, and fast-forward. Bonus words are: editor-in-chief, merry-go-round, and father-in-law.
Week 21 Spelling List
Week 21 focuses on compound words, such as: two-week, background, quick-witted, and cattail. Bonus words are: once-in-a-lifetime and chickpea.
Week 22 Spelling List
Week 22 focuses on irregular past tense words, such as knew/known, flew/flown, lay/lain, and blew/blown. Bonus words are: overtook/overtaken, rode/ridden, rose/risen.
Week 23 Spelling List
Week 23 focuses on irregular past tense words, such as: saw/seen, shrank/shrunk, wrote/written, sewed/sewn. Bonus words are: understood/understood, wrung/wrung, wove/woven.
Week 24 Spelling List
Week 24 focuses on irregular plural nouns, such as: buffalo, knives, children, criteria. Bonus words are: radii, crises, and phenomena.
Week 25 Spelling List
Week 25 focuses on Greek root words, such as: antifreeze, exotic, strategy, and dynamite. Bonus words are: rhythm and bibliography.
Fourth Grade Spelling Words Week 26-F-image
Week 27 Spelling List
Week 27 focuses on Greek and Latin root words, such as: antacid, television, hyperactive, and sociology. Bonus words are: dysfunction, neuroscience, and monolingual.
Fourth 9 Weeks (28-36) Printable Word Lists
Week 28 Spelling List
The spelling list for week 28 focuses on less common prefix words, such as: hindsight, astronaut, ambidextrous, and empower. Bonus words are: ambivalent, panorama, and international.
Week 29 Spelling List
Week 29 focuses on less common prefixes in words, such as: pedestrian, ultraviolet, unicycle, and uplift. Bonus words are: surreal and ultrasonic.
Week 30 Spelling List
Week 30 focuses on less common prefixes in words, such as: underperform, embrace, astronomy, and ambiguity. Bonus words are: monochrome and ambiguous.
Week 31 Spelling List
Week 31 focuses on less common suffixes in words, such as: kitchenette, economics, puppy, and booklet. Bonus words are: calculus and salmonella.
Week 32 Spelling List
Week 32 focuses on less common suffixes in words, such as: democracy, velocity, cardiac, and athletic. Bonus words are: poetic and tenacity.
Week 33 Spelling List
Week 33 focuses on less common suffixes in words, such as: transcribe, forward, backward, and clockwise. Bonus words are: adulthood, centrifugal, and worrisome.
Week 34 Spelling List
Week 34 focuses on words with schwa, such as: analysis, away, problem, and balloon. Bonus words are: although, system, and company.
Week 35 Spelling List
Week 35 focuses on words with schwa, such as: upon, difficult, general, and second. Bonus words are: development and international.
Week 36 Spelling List
Week 36 focuses on words with schwa, such as: evidence, human, open, and award. Bonus words are: security, attention, and environment.
How can this curriculum help students improve reading and writing? This 36-week curriculum builds the advanced decoding and encoding skills third graders need for increasingly complex texts. By systematically teaching multisyllable patterns, affixes, and syllable division rules, students learn to break apart unfamiliar words when reading and construct correct spellings when writing. The progression from word patterns to word relationships (homophones, homographs) also strengthens vocabulary and helps students avoid common spelling confusions.
What research supports this curriculum? This curriculum follows systematic, explicit instruction aligned with the Science of Reading. Skills build logically—students master multisyllable patterns before tackling affixes, learn base words before studying how prefixes and suffixes change them, and understand syllable types before applying division rules. This structured morphological approach helps students recognize meaningful word parts, which research shows improves both spelling accuracy and reading comprehension in upper elementary grades.
How do I use these weekly spelling lists? Each weekly list includes 10 core spelling words, bonus words for students ready for more challenge, and sight words for continued high-frequency practice. Introduce 2-3 words per day through dictation, word sorts, and morphology activities. For affix weeks, have students identify base words and discuss how prefixes or suffixes change meaning. For syllable division weeks, practice breaking words apart using the targeted pattern. The bonus words extend the same pattern for advanced spellers.
