How to Study for a Spelling Bee: Lists, Roots, Practice

Start with the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s official list for your level. That’s the 450-word School Spelling Bee Study List for classroom and school bees, then the 4,000-word Words of the Champions for any bee after that (Scripps study tips). Once those feel solid, study the patterns behind the words, like Greek and Latin roots and the habits of words from particular languages, so you can make a good guess at a word you’ve never seen (Dr. Jacques Bailly, “How to Study for a Spelling Bee”). Practice out loud as well, since a bee means standing up and spelling in front of people (Bailly).

Match your study list to your bee

Your next bee	What to study	Good to know
Classroom, grade-level or school bee	School Spelling Bee Study List (450 words)	Starts with first-grade words and gets harder up to eighth grade (study tips)
Regional qualifier or regional bee	Words of the Champions (4,000 words, including all 450 school words)	Split into One Bee, Two Bee and Three Bee levels (study tips)
Scripps National Spelling Bee	Words of the Champions, then the Bee’s official dictionary	In 2026, Rounds One and Two used Words of the Champions (2026 Contest Rules)

On the school list, learn your own grade level first and then the rest of it. If your bee has vocabulary questions, use the version of the list that includes parts of speech and definitions (study tips).

After the school bee, any word in Words of the Champions can come up, and the Bee warns that bees often end with words you haven’t studied (study tips). Official competition lists are built that way: they start with words from the two study resources and end with a section of words that aren’t in either one (2027 Suggested Rules).

At nationals the pool gets much bigger. Under the 2026 Contest Rules, any word in Merriam-Webster Unabridged could be used unless it was marked archaic or obsolete (2026 Contest Rules). The 2027 Contest Rules are due in late fall of 2026 (Scripps rules page).

Where to get the official lists

• Ask the school’s spelling bee coordinator. Contacts at enrolled schools download the study materials when they log in to spellingbee.com (Scripps FAQs). Enrollment also comes with grade-level study lists and written test materials for spelling and vocabulary (enrollment).
• Parents can open a free Spelling Bee Resource Center account, pick their child’s school, and download study lists once that school has enrolled (Scripps FAQs; Resource Center). The center also posts new study tips and word content every month (Resource Center).
• The Bee also offers its own free study app, Word Club, for phones and tablets, with links to the app stores on its study tips page (study tips).
• Words of the Champions is also sold as a paperback. The Bee’s FAQ says the 2027 booklet goes on sale on Amazon after Labor Day (Scripps FAQs). Enrolled schools have had the 2027 edition since August 18, 2026 (Words of the Champions FAQ).

Every year the Bee also puts out a reading list called the Bee’s Bookshelf. All 450 words on the School Spelling Bee Study List appear in its books (Scripps FAQs), so you can meet each word in context (study tips).

The School Competition List is a different document. Officials read from it during the bee, and the Bee says it isn’t a study guide and shouldn’t be given to students (Scripps FAQs).

Study roots and word origins

Dr. Jacques Bailly, the 1980 national champion and the Bee’s official pronouncer, points out that every speller runs into words they don’t know. To make better guesses, he suggests studying patterns (Bailly):

• Start with Greek and Latin roots. The Greek root tele- means “far,” which is why telephone, television and telegraph share it. If you hear telekinesis and the definition has to do with distance, tele- is a very good guess.
• Start with words you already know. Look up their roots and keep a list of other words that use each one.
• Note the exceptions, where a root changes its spelling or drops a letter. Bailly says those are the words that can make a big difference in a bee.
• Collect words from one language. Bailly’s example is Hawaiian: muumuu, wiki, mahimahi and aloha. After a few dozen, you start to get a feel for how that language’s words look. German, Italian, Hindi, Dutch, Quechua and Chinese are a few of the other languages he names.
• List the ways a sound can be spelled. Words from Greek often spell a z sound with an x, which is why Xerox starts with a buzz but not a z.
• Learn the dictionary’s pronunciation symbols. Once you can read them, you can pronounce words you’ve never heard.

Roots and origins live in a word’s etymology, which a dictionary entry shows after the pronunciation and part of speech and before the definition (Bailly). The Bee’s official dictionary is Merriam-Webster Unabridged (2027 Suggested Rules). It has more than 158,000 etymologies, and its advanced search can look inside them (Merriam-Webster), which is how Bailly suggests finding words from a language such as Hawaiian (Bailly). On its pronunciation symbols page, you can click each symbol to hear it (Merriam-Webster). The Unabridged is sold by subscription and also offers institutional access (Merriam-Webster), so ask your school or library whether you can use theirs.

At nationals, a language-of-origin answer may not be the whole story. The Bee doesn’t promise to list every language a word passed through, only the ones that changed it significantly (2026 Contest Rules).

What to ask at the microphone

Under the Bee’s Suggested Rules, judges can’t disqualify you for asking a question (2027 Suggested Rules). Those rules, written as guidance for local bees, let you ask the pronouncer to say the word again, define it, use it in a sentence, or give its part of speech, language of origin or alternate pronunciations. The pronouncer won’t answer root word questions, give a different definition or say the word more slowly (2027 Suggested Rules). The Bee’s quick guide for school coordinators lists questions about a word’s origin as something students can ask at the school level (Scripps rules page). Your local officials don’t have to use the Suggested Rules at all, so ask them which rules apply (Scripps rules page). Nationals also allows root word questions in a set format (2026 Contest Rules), and our guide to Scripps National Spelling Bee rules covers the rest of the national rulebook.

Some ways to use your questions:

• Ask for the definition whenever a word might have a homonym. The pronouncer is supposed to define those, but the Bee can’t guarantee every homonym has been flagged, and understanding the word is your job (2027 Suggested Rules).
• Ask for the language of origin when you’re stuck between two spellings, then check it against the patterns you’ve collected for that language.
• Ask for a sentence or the part of speech when you need to know which form of the word you’re spelling.

A practice routine

Bailly’s first piece of advice is to remember that a bee is a performance, and to practice it like one (Bailly). Try this:

1. Get a pronouncer. A friend or family member reads each word and answers your questions about it.
2. Stand up as if you’re at a microphone, ask your questions, then spell. Bailly even suggests getting a bell for misses.
3. Say each letter clearly and face your “judges.” Real judges like to see your lips move, because it helps them catch misunderstandings and misspellings (2027 Suggested Rules).
4. Spell at a steady pace. You may start over, but you can’t change letters you’ve already said or the order you said them in (Scripps rules page).
5. Throw in some unstudied words to test your root and language patterns, since bees past the school level often end with words like that (study tips).
6. Time yourself if you’re aiming for nationals. In 2026, spellers had 90 seconds per word, and the judges and pronouncer stopped talking with the speller for the last 15 seconds (2026 Contest Rules).
7. Learn what the words mean. The national competition has multiple-choice vocabulary rounds (competition page), and local bees can use vocabulary questions too (2027 Suggested Rules).

Bailly’s advice for the day-to-day work is to stay with words at your level until you’re ready for harder ones, quiz yourself, have other people quiz you, use new words in your writing, and read often, looking up words you don’t know (Bailly).

Plan around the bee calendar

Classroom and school bees run through the fall (enrollment). School champions then go on to regional qualifier and regional bees in February and March (Scripps home page). To be eligible for the 2027 national competition, a speller has to win an SNSB-sanctioned regional bee on or after February 1, 2027, or be named a national competitor by a regional partner (2027 eligibility requirements). Count back from your regional bee to decide when to finish the school list and move on to Words of the Champions.