Spelling Worksheets for Students with Special Needs

Here’s a collection of ALL my spelling worksheets made especially for children with Down Syndrome and other special needs. I use them to supplement All About Spelling, but they can be used with any Science of Reading aligned phonics or spelling program.

Spelling can be challenging for children with Down Syndrome and anyone who struggles with short term memory and handwriting. Spelling frames, accompanied with pictures for each word, are a great visual support. The pictures remind students of the words they need to spell. Furthermore, the boxes in the frames help students identify how many phonograms they need to sequence, while helping students to correctly place and space the letters, promoting good handwriting habits. These worksheets also accommodate students who still need to write large letters, as well as students with impaired vision.

First, students read and copy each word:

On the next day, students segment and spell the word. Students who need extra support can build each word with phonogram tiles and then copy it into the spelling frames. These spelling frames use dashed boxes to indicate silent letters, such as silent e:

Once students can write the words independently into the spelling frames (this may take a few days), they are ready to write them on blank lines.

For words with Vowel Teams, Dipthongs, and R-Controlled syllables, I also include word mapping activities. For each word, students can see how the word is mapped and segmented. Then, they can copy the word map or try to segment and map it on their own.

This is in addition to the usual word frames and spelling sheets:

For multi-syllabic words, the word mapping model shows students how each word is broken into syllables. This modeling can be used to support explicit teaching of the syllabification rules as taught in any Science of Reading phonics/spelling program.