SATS
Spelling

Why this works like the real spelling paper

In the KS2 SATS, spelling is tested in English Paper 2. A teacher reads out twenty sentences, one at a time, each with a single word missing, and the child writes that word on an answer sheet. There is nothing on screen to pick from.

Most online spelling practice shows the word in four versions and asks the child to choose the right one. That tests whether they can recognise a correct spelling, which is an easier job than producing one from memory. A child can score well on that and still drop marks in May.

This tool does it the SATS way. Each word is read out on its own, and Hear the sentence reads it in context. The sentence appears with a gap where the word goes, and your child types straight into the gap.

You do not have to choose anything

Press Start and the test begins. The tool holds 257 different words in the order they are worth learning, keeps track of which ones your child has already spelled correctly without a clue, and serves the next ten they have not. Come back a week later and it carries on from where they stopped.

The words are mixed from all three lists below, so a round is never ten of the same kind of thing. If you would rather work on one list on its own, choose it in Settings.

Spot and fix

Spot and fix shows a sentence with one word spelled wrong, the way children check their own writing. Your child taps the wrong word, then types the right spelling. The mistakes are the ones children really make, like seperate and goverment, so it trains the eye to catch them.

The three lists

Tricky Spellings, 108 words

The Department for Education's statutory spelling list for Year 5 and Year 6, which is where SATS spelling questions come from, together with the high-frequency words that catch children out every year.

Ambitious Words, 95 words

Stronger alternatives to the words that fill a first draft: said, walked, looked, big, happy, scared. Writing at KS2 is assessed by the teacher rather than by a paper, and a better word only helps if your child can spell it.

Easily Confused, 56 spellings

There and their and they're, affect and effect, practice and practise. Homophones are named in the statutory spelling appendix, and they are the one place where hearing the word tells your child nothing at all. The sentence is the only thing that decides which spelling is right, so reading for that is the skill being practised.

How to use it at home

• Press Start and let it choose. Working out which words to practise is the job the tool is doing for you.
• Ten words is a round. Working through fifty in one sitting will teach your child very little.
• Come back to Fix my words a day or two later rather than straight away. Leaving a gap is what moves a spelling into long-term memory.
• Let them press Clue. Every word carries a memory hook, and a word learnt with a hook is still learnt. A word only counts as learnt once they get it right without one.
• Switch Words each round to twenty in the weeks before the test, because twenty words in one go is what the real paper asks for.