Nat'l spelling bee.

I never really did. And I more or less surrendered to that failing ..... in the years that followed formal education

It seemed to help me retain their spelling in my memory.

For example, if someone lived in a house on Wapakoneta Street, they would surely learn the proper spelling pretty quickly. Word association is another way - mnemonics. In my experience, however, some words can be challenging anyway, and that requires rote memorization - not my favorite method.

I did the same when learning foreign languages.

Sounds: Odd iss-see (three S to emphasize hissiness of sound I play in my head)

"it's" vs "its": The possessive form keeps the s close to itself.

Thus, writing it down, if I am unsure, usually does the trick unless it is a term I am unfamiliar with.

That is how I spelled Mississippi. Remember the bouncing white ball on children's programming way back when? They made learning so much fun!

I'll spell a word out, and if it doesn't look right, I'll try a different spelling. More often now that I'm older, I check the spelling with Google.
I especially have trouble with I before E, and also words such as conscious, incense, and license.

so mom and i solved the problem as a team
to get her in my mind i added a mental picture of a train switch engine switchenge backing up and coupling them together.

So muscle memory and a certain rhythm helped because there are not signs for every word so they had to be finger spelled.

Over and over and over again till it stuck.. Time consuming? yes and it works for me..
I also say it in a silly way
Renaissance re NAIS sance
Abyssinian a BYS sinian
etc....

I used to get the spelling of the wrong "desert" sounded like "dessert" for spelling. The word "desert" is pronounced "des-sert" and "dessert" is prounced "de-sert." I figured an easy way to remember the difference in spelling. "Dessert" is twice as sweet as "desert" so "dessert" has two "s's".

In fact, that's how I remembered which was which as a kid.
Always use the word that's the opposite of what it "should be".

I absolutely hated it and thought it was a big waste of time. I wanted to take French cuz I thought it was glamorous, but Latin was a prerequisite before you could take French or Spanish.

At the time I thought my school was being SO MEAN TO ME!

But, I was wrong. It helped me enormously. Probably it was the most important one subject I took that benefited me the most as I went though my undergrad work and then went for a Master's.

Oh, and it helps with lots of Jeopardy questions, too!