Discover how spelling works in only five minutes a week.

One Step Now Education June 6, 2025 éclaircissement Faizan Zaki, the winner of this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, took home the prize with his successful spelling of éclaircissement. As he typed out the letters on an "air keyboard," the audience was probably left wondering, "What is this word?" Our investigation of this word reminds us that suffixes can create various word classes, like nouns. We'll compare Latin and French infinitive endings and take a look at infixes, including...

One Step Now Education May 30, 2025 piquant Continuing the trend of familiar words of which I'm unsure of the meaning, we have piquant. Now I know piquant is usually brought up in the context of food or a smell. I'm hypothesizing a French origin, due to the <qu> and the possibility of an <-ant> suffix. Let's investigate further and find out. As we investigate, we will learn more about colloquial uses of words and the functions of adjectives. We will also understand etymological relatives and...

One Step Now Education May 23, 2025 inexorable n her exploration of the history of Chinese cuisine, Invitation to a Banquet, the author, Fuschia Dunlop describes an “inexorable journey toward greater openness." What exactly is inexorable? This is not the first time I've encountered this word. Do you have words you are familiar with but you're not truly sure of the meaning either? Then come with me and explore the orthography of this one. Along the way, we will learn about daughter languages...

One Step Now Education May 16, 2025 secretion I was reading an article about spelling assessment, and this word came up as having "secret" inside and I started wondering if that was actually true. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet. Looks can be deceiving. As we follow our curiosity, we’ll encounter a back-formation and explore the principal parts of a Latin verb. Along the way, we’ll see how a past participle can transform into modern English forms. A single PIE root will...

One Step Now Education May 9, 2025 delicate Sometimes it's the common words that make you stop and take pause, "How is this word built?" This study began when I was reminded that the <light> in delight is not related to the <light> we know as the free base, light, meaning "source of illumination" or "pale." The <light> in delight is from the Latin delectare, which is also the source of delectable and delicious. The <light> in light has a source in Old English, *leht. As we investigate this...

One Step Now Education May 2, 2025 hybrid I've taught many teachers and many students about hybrid words, but I've never considered investigating the word hybriditself. Wouldn't it be interesting if it ended up being a hybrid word? While we explore, we'll look at how content area vocabulary from science and social studies can spawn an investigation. Not only will we touch on Greek literary concepts, but we will cruise by the history of the alphabet a bit too, including a letter we lost....