SATS Spelling Test

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 does something different. It 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 question reads the word on its own first, then reads the whole sentence with the word in it. The sentence appears on screen with a blank where the word goes, so your child has the context without being shown the letters.

You do not have to choose anything

Press Start and the test begins. The tool holds 259 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. Nothing to pick, nothing to write down.

The words are mixed from all three lists below, so a session is never ten of the same kind of thing. If you would rather work on one list on its own, the dropdown under the button does that.

The three lists, 259 words

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 session. Working through fifty in one sitting will teach your child very little.
• Come back to Practise the ones I got wrong 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 towards the progress bar once they get it right without one.
• Switch How many to twenty in the weeks before the test, because twenty words in one go is what the real paper asks for.