Valerie's Spelling Bee Supplement - Classics

VALERIE'S SPELLING BEE SUPPLEMENT - CLASSICS 

Our travel-sized, must-have guidebook is now available in limited out-of-print years! Since 1983, we have included words from the annual Scripps list and added our additional grade-appropriate words along with abbreviated definitions, parts of speech, phonetic pronunciations, and language of origin. If you like our Annual Valerie's Spelling Bee Supplement and are on the hunt for more words previously used in bees, Valerie's Supplement Classics are an excellent choice for helping students build a solid word foundation starting with grade-appropriate levels. Since Classics are out-of-print versions of Valerie's Supplement, the years available are in limited supply. Please view our drop-down menu to select from our list of available years.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

In addition to the approximately 2,500+ word list, Valerie's Supplement Classics provide the following for each word:

• Phonetic Pronunciation
• Definition(s)
• Part(s) of Speech
• Language of Origin

LOOKING FOR THE PAIDEIA LISTS? The full list can be found within our three Paideia eMentors: Paideia '95, Paideia '01, and Paideia '06.

What is the difference between Spell It! and Paideia?

In recent years and until 2006, the Paideia was the annual Scripps list of practice study words containing the NSB rules and approximately 3,000 to 4,000+ words arranged by category. Each page had a different category and words assigned to difficulty levels, including Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced. In 2007, Scripps changed the annual study list to a booklet called Spell It! which no longer had a Scripps copyright, but instead, was copyrighted by Merriam-Webster. Containing 700 words originally, Spell It! was organized primarily by language of origin and contained spelling tips and suggested activities on each page. The number of words has increased to 1,000+.

Following the drastic change in 2007, controversy sprung in the spelling world over the study list that contained only 700 words. To serious spellers, the Spell It! collection felt less challenging, and many noted that the level of difficulty of the words was reduced, asserting that words in the Advanced category of Spell It! would have never qualified for the same category in the Paideia. A newspaper article covering the issue quoted a Scripps representative who explained that the change served to meet the demand of customers who felt that the annual booklet was too long and difficult and that the shorter list was their attempt to encourage greater participation among novice spellers.

Hexco's word collection supports novice to advanced level spellers who seek to gain the widest word foundation possible. For those who seek to go beyond the Spell It! list and Scripps Words You Need to Know, our word wizards have collected and stored not only all the Spell It! and Paideia words but many trickier words that may show up at any competition or SAT test. Additionally, most of our products include pronunciations, definitions, etymology, and more to give every speller a broad spelling foundation as well as a fair chance at "guessing" a word just by understanding more about word origins and "rules."