Blog - Spelling tips, guides and resources

Best Modern UK Spelling Apps: Spelling.Live vs SpellCast 12 October 2026 Spelling.Live matches SpellCast and EdShed on the typing side - your own school list, typed or photographed, practised against British audio - then adds AI handwriting checking, a personalised screen-free practice pack, paper test marking from a photo, pattern-level mistake diagnosis and a flat monthly Family plan.

One Spelling Curriculum, Four Countries: Why Spelling.Live Follows England's 9 October 2026 England, Australia, the US and India teach spelling in very different ways. Here's how each one sets out what children should spell and when, why Spelling.Live maps its progress reports to England's National Curriculum, how closely that lines up with Australia's, and how to read the year headings if your child goes to school somewhere else.

The Three-Week Checkpoint: Can They Still Spell It, and Can They Use It? 8 October 2026 Getting 'rain' right on review doesn't show a child can spell 'paint'. Every three weeks, Spelling.Live now offers a short checkpoint that asks two questions about each spelling pattern a child has practised: do they remember the words they learned, and can they apply the pattern to words they have never been given? The idea came from Faizel Manjoo of Education Beyond.

Sound Parts (Beta): Sound Boxes for Early Years, and Why Splitting a Word Into Sounds Is Tricky 7 October 2026 Sound Parts is a new early-years activity on Spelling.Live: the app says a word from your child's list and they put its sounds in order, one box per sound. Here is how it works, and the honest list of what makes splitting English words into sounds harder than it looks.

Offline Spelling Practice: A Printable Pack Built From Your Child's Own Words 3 October 2026 Spelling.Live's printed practice pack turns your child's own word list into a week of screen-free spelling practice: look-cover-write-check, a crossword or word search, a paragraph and Friday's test. What is in it, why the words matter, and what we plan to add.

The Hidden Work Behind a Weekly Spelling Test (Free Workload Audit) 1 October 2026 A free spelling workload audit and class spelling pattern tracker for KS1 and KS2 teachers. See where the time goes around a weekly spelling test, and which patterns your class needs to revisit.

Spelling.Live Now Works With Wonde: Pilot Schools Wanted 1 October 2026 Spelling.Live can now bring a school's classes across from Wonde without retyping a name, so a teacher gets from class list to spelling practice, marked and reported, in minutes. It is built and tested, and we are looking for a primary school to pilot it with us.

How Spelling.Live's Picture Hints Are Made - And Why the Whole Community Gets Better Together 26 September 2026 Every early-years word can get its own AI-generated picture clue - and you can improve it. Here's how the illustrations are made, why they show up as a reward in Balloon Pop, how a parent can refine the prompt, and why generating one image quietly helps every other family too.

Import Your Class From Google Classroom 26 September 2026 If you already run your class through Google Classroom, you don't need to type a roster into Spelling.Live by hand. Connect once, pick a course, tick who to bring across - pupils keep the same simple logins as ever.

Is My Child Behind With Spelling? What's Expected in Each Year (UK) 26 September 2026 What the National Curriculum expects children to spell in each year of primary school, the signs that a child is genuinely struggling rather than just having a hard week, and what actually helps at home.

Looking for a Spelling Shed Alternative? What to Compare (UK, 2026) 26 September 2026 Spelling Shed is the spelling app most UK schools know. If you want something different at home - your school's own list, handwriting rather than typing, or a clearer picture of why words go wrong - here is what to compare and where Spelling.Live fits. Checked September 2026.

Best Spelling Apps for Kids in the UK (2026): Judged on What Actually Improves Spelling 25 September 2026 Most 'best spelling app' lists compare features and prices. This one compares eight UK spelling apps against six things research links to better spelling: teaching rather than just testing, spaced revisiting, practising the way children are tested, word structure, knowing why a word went wrong, and understanding what the word means. Checked September 2026.

How Schools Are Using Spelling.Live: Whole-Class Sessions, Small-Group Interventions and Early Years 24 September 2026 Three real ways teachers are using Spelling.Live this term - short whole-class sessions on school devices, one-to-one spelling interventions, and early years picture-and-handwriting practice - with the usage numbers behind each. Plus a free one-class pilot for schools that want to try it.

Two Classes, 1,875 Spelling Attempts: What the Data Showed Their Teachers 24 September 2026 Real, anonymised reports from two primary classes' first month on Spelling.Live. Every pupil in one class practised, both classes tripped on the same two spelling rules, and the teachers could see who had finished the week's list, why each word went wrong and how each child's handwriting was coming on, without marking anything.

Meet Education Beyond, Spelling.Live's Founding Educational Partner 21 September 2026 Faizel Manjoo of Education Beyond - 24+ years in education, former British international school Principal - is Spelling.Live's Founding Educational Partner. Here's who he is and what the partnership means for families.

Your Child's Spelling List, Spelled the Way Their School Spells It 19 September 2026 Spelling.Live now asks which English your child's school uses - UK, US, Australian or Indian - per child. Pick US English and favorite, color and organize save exactly as you type them, instead of being quietly corrected to the British spelling.

Spelling.live vs Spelling Shed (EdShed), Squeebles, Sir Linkalot and More - An Honest Comparison 18 September 2026 How does Spelling.Live compare with EdShed's Spelling Shed, Squeebles, Sir Linkalot, DoodleSpell, Spellzone and Nessy? A fair, feature-by-feature look at the UK's main spelling apps for KS1 and KS2 children.

Why Assessment Data Quality Matters: Reviewing and Excluding Spelling Attempts 18 September 2026 Spelling.Live's new Practice History lets you review every spelling attempt your child has made and exclude an individual one from progress reporting - a distraction, a misread word, a stray tap - without ever changing or deleting the original record.

What's New on Spelling.Live - Smart Practice, a Clearer Account Screen, and Why Credits Now Cost Something 16 September 2026 One switchable Smart practice tile replaces four locked ones, paper practice checks before recording a printed list as a finished attempt, Manage settings becomes Account settings, and a note on why practice now runs on a credit balance.

5.0 / 5 from the Educational App Store - and Everything We've Built Since 10 September 2026 In August 2026 the Educational App Store rated Spelling.Live 5.0 out of 5 and called it one of the most complete spelling practice solutions for UK primary learners. Here's the review, in full, and a round-up of the Learning plan, Word Parts, Word Meanings, the Aid Ladder, fairer handwriting marking, the National Curriculum mastery path and the Android launch we've shipped since.

How Spelling.live Credits Work - And How to Get More 10 September 2026 How Spelling.live's credit system works: what's free, what costs credits, the 200 free credits every family starts with, and the £4 top-up pack.

Your Child Got 8 Out of 10. Is That Mastery? 7 September 2026 A spelling score tells you what happened on one morning. It doesn't tell you whether the rule behind those words has actually stuck. Here's the scale Spelling.Live now uses instead - Started, Nearly there, Secure - what each one really means, why only writing from memory counts for the top rung, and how to switch the national curriculum framing off if it isn't the right yardstick for your family.

Spelling.Live Is Now on the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Web 3 September 2026 Spelling.Live is available everywhere your family already is - a free native app on iPhone and iPad, a free native app on Android via Google Play, and the same account in any browser at spelling.live. No install needed to try it.

Spelling Tests, Sorted: Print, Dictate, Scan - the Bulk Marking Workflow Step by Step 2 September 2026 A walkthrough of Spelling.Live's bulk scan marking for teachers and tutors: print personalised QR sheets, dictate the test as normal, scan the pile, and let the app mark it - you only check the handful it wasn't sure about. Includes a 60-second video and what it costs.

The Aid Ladder: Help That Arrives One Step at a Time 2 September 2026 When a child gets a word wrong on Spelling.Live, the app no longer just reveals the answer. Help now climbs a ladder - a flash of the word, or a coaching tip from Tongo, then just the tricky letters, then more - with a retry after every step and a kind exit when it's not happening today. Here's how it works, how to tune it per child, and why the progress report stays honest.

Word Meanings: Because a Word You Don't Understand Is a Word You Can't Remember 2 September 2026 A child who doesn't know what 'ominous' means has nothing to hang its spelling on. Word Meanings is Spelling.Live's vocabulary activity: match each of this week's words to its meaning, then drop it into its own sentence - with wrong answers drawn from the same list, so the questions get harder exactly where the confusions really live. And it never inflates the spelling accuracy score.

Word Parts: How Children Learn to Spell Long Words by Their Pieces 2 September 2026 'Disappointment' is fourteen letters - or three small pieces a child already knows. Word Parts is Spelling.Live's morphology activity: build the word from its parts, then find the letter that changes where the pieces join. Here's why it works, why every word split is checked by hand, and why - unlike our games - it counts towards the progress report.

Three Mistakes, One Rule: How Spelling.Live Learned to Name the Pattern Behind a Word 24 August 2026 Your child's progress report used to list tricky words one by one. Now it groups them under the spelling rule behind them, shows how a long word is built, and where it came from. Here is how we built the lexicon underneath it, the rules we gave ourselves so it never guesses, and the sources we leaned on.

Beta: A Paper Class Test for Schools and Tuition Centres - We're Looking for Pilot Partners 19 August 2026 We've built and privately trialled a way to run a whole class's spelling test on paper - print QR-coded sheets, dictate as normal, scan the pile, and let AI do the marking. It's in beta after a limited test, and we're looking for a few more schools or tuition centres to pilot it before a wider release.

Proper Joined-Up Cursive Tracing, UK School Fonts, and How Spelling.Live Really Reads Your Child's Handwriting 17 August 2026 The writing pad just got a big upgrade: genuine UK continuous-cursive tracing using Google's Playwrite England fonts, a cleaner single writing line, an eraser, and a look under the bonnet at the two-stage handwriting recognition that makes the native app instant for neat writing and forgiving of messy writing.

What's New on Spelling.Live - A Weekly Learning Plan for Every Child, Smarter Word Suggestions, and a Smoother Practice Screen 12 August 2026 A round-up of this month's big update: a ready-made, fully editable weekly Learning plan built from three templates, AI word suggestions seeded from your child's own tricky words, My Challenges results, per-mode Flash control, and a stack of practice-screen fixes for slow connections and small phones.

Spelling.Live for Tutors and Small Tuition Centres 5 August 2026 Running spelling sessions for several children at once? Spelling.Live lets a tutor set up a class, assign one list to everyone with a due date, and see the whole group's progress - while each child still gets their own home practice and report.

Practice Doesn't Have to Look Like Practice: Spelling.Live's Arcade Games 4 August 2026 Every game in Spelling.Live is built from your child's own word list. A close look at three arcade centrepieces - Letter Climb, Letter Maze and Boggle - plus challenging a friend to beat your score, and how low-pressure mode and the parental Game prices & plays controls tailor the games to a child who'd rather not race the clock.

Handwriting, Typing, or a Photo of Paper: Every Way to Practise Spelling on Spelling.Live 1 August 2026 Yes - Spelling.Live supports written input as well as typing: handwrite on screen, type answers, say the word aloud, or photograph paper work. Here's every input method, and which one to use when.

The Skills Check Now Works on Paper, on Screen, or Typed - and Starts With What's Actually Tricky 1 August 2026 Spelling.Live's Skills Check - the feature-based spelling inventory that builds a focus list automatically - now runs three ways: typed, on paper, or written on screen. It also defaults to your child's own weakest words instead of a fixed level, and a fix means homophones can finally be heard in a sentence every time.

Homophone Mix-Ups on Paper: How Spelling.Live Catches 'their' for 'there' 29 July 2026 A crossed-out homophone like 'hear' for 'here' looks like a correctly spelled word - which is exactly why it's so easy to miss. Here's how Spelling.Live's Paper practice reads a photographed spelling sheet and catches the mix-up anyway.

Sweden Is Bringing Back Handwriting - Here's the Research It's Catching Up To 28 July 2026 Sweden is reversing years of digital-first classrooms, returning to books and handwriting. It's not nostalgia - it's what the research on memory and learning has been saying all along.

How to Help Your Child Practise for a Weekly Spelling Test at Home 19 July 2026 Spelling homework doesn't have to be a battle. The right spelling homework app makes weekly test prep quick, effective, and far less stressful for primary school children.

Sound, Spelling and Structure - The Three Layers Behind Every Spelling Mistake 18 July 2026 Every spelling mistake sits on one of three linguistic layers: phonology (the sound), grapheme-phoneme mapping (turning sounds into letters), and morphology (how words are built). Here's how Spelling.Live's pattern engine covers all three.

Turn your child's spelling log book into holiday practice 16 July 2026 Your child's spelling log book holds a whole term of words. Photograph it and Spelling.Live turns it into targeted holiday practice, no lists to build.

The Name Is the Problem 14 July 2026 I named the app Spelling.Live, and then I had to keep explaining how to say it. Is it live, or live? The word gives you nothing - and that is the whole reason the app exists.

Beyond Right or Wrong - The 18 KS2 Spelling Patterns Behind Every Mistake 9 July 2026 Spelling.Live doesn't just mark a word right or wrong - it recognises the exact spelling pattern behind the mistake, from silent letters to homophones, and explains it in plain English.

Accessibility at Spelling.live: Why We Don't Stop at 'Meets the Standard' 6 July 2026 A round-up of the accessibility work we've shipped recently - dyslexia-friendly reading options, speech slow-down, low-pressure mode, and a mistake-pattern report - and why we treat the official standards as the floor, not the finish line.

Practice-First Rewards: Coins You Earn by Spelling, Games That Earn Their Place 4 July 2026 We've rebalanced how rewards work in Spelling.Live so the games stay a treat, not the main event. Coins now come only from spelling practice, and unlocking a game buys a set number of plays rather than a permanent pass - so a little more practice is always what keeps the fun going.

What's New on Spelling.Live - Three New Games, a Progress Report That Tells the Whole Story, and Lists Built From a Single Topic 1 July 2026 A round-up of everything we shipped this month: Boggle, Spell Sprint and Challenge mode for friendly competition, a progress report that finally breaks down every game and mode, a dedicated screen for building age-matched spelling lists from a topic, sharper handwriting recognition, and the compliance work now signed off.

What's New on Spelling.Live - Sharper Practice, Smarter Lists, and the Word We Accidentally Banned 14 June 2026 A round-up of the improvements we shipped this week: your lists pre-selected and ready, AI word lists from a single topic, on-device handwriting recognition (Apple Vision, ML Kit and the web Handwriting API) with a cloud fallback, a writing pad that fits a phone in landscape, and an honest story about an over-cautious safety filter that blocked the word 'kick'.

How We Keep Your Child's Data Safe 13 June 2026 Spelling.live is built for children, so privacy and safeguarding come first. Here's exactly what we do - parent-managed accounts, no AI training on your data, transient photos and voice, one-tap delete and export, and a published AI-provider review.

The Skills Check - Find the Right Words to Practise (and Why It Beats a Spelling Score) 13 June 2026 Spelling.Live's new Skills Check is a feature-based spelling inventory: it works out which spelling patterns your child has mastered and which to work on next, then builds a focus list automatically. Here's the thinking behind it - what it does, and what it costs.

How Spelling.Live Helps Tricky Words Stick - Spaced Repetition Without the Flashcard Grind 11 June 2026 Spelling.Live now schedules each child's trickiest words to come back at the right moment, using a spaced-repetition approach built on real practice - no 0-to-5 self-grading, no flashcard chore.

Photograph the Marked Spelling Test - Paper Practice That Updates the Reports 8 June 2026 Most school spelling still happens on paper. Spelling.Live's Paper practice reads a photo of your child's marked spelling test, updates their progress report, adds the words to practise, and even scores their handwriting - bridging paper and screen like no other spelling app.

How Spelling.live Analyses Your Child's Handwriting - And Why It Matters 3 June 2026 Most spelling apps ignore how children form letters. Spelling.live uses AI vision to check shape, reversals, spacing and more - with instant feedback and a weekly formation report.

Why We Don't Offer Guest Mode - And Why That's Actually A Good Thing 2 June 2026 We removed guest mode from Spelling.live - and it's the best decision we made. Here's exactly why a guest session could never show you what makes us different.

How Spelling.Live's AI Progress Reports Keep Parents in the Loop 31 May 2026 Spelling.Live sends parents a weekly or monthly email showing exactly how their child practised spelling - sessions, accuracy, tricky words, and which modes they used most.

KS1 Spelling Lists - Common Exception Words for Year 1 and Year 2 28 May 2026 Spelling.Live now includes ready-made KS1 word lists covering the Year 1 and Year 2 common exception words from the UK National Curriculum. Add them in seconds and start practising straight away.

How to Use KS2 Spelling Lists - and Why Hiding Old Lists Helps Your Child Focus 28 May 2026 Spelling.Live now includes four ready-made KS2 National Curriculum word lists. Learn how to add them in seconds, and why hiding mastered lists keeps your child focused.

Look, Cover, Write, Check - Why Handwriting Still Matters in Spelling Practice 24 May 2026 The look cover write check method is one of the most effective spelling techniques. Here's how a digital handwriting spelling app brings it into everyday practice at home.

AI Spelling Apps for Children - How Technology Is Changing How Kids Learn to Spell 23 May 2026 From phonics audio to voice dictation and AI-powered feedback, discover how the best AI spelling apps for kids go far beyond a simple word list.

The Best UK Spelling App for KS1 and KS2 - National Curriculum Word Lists 22 May 2026 Looking for a KS1 or KS2 spelling app built around the UK National Curriculum? Here's what to look for, and how to practise Year 1 through Year 6 spelling words at home.

How to Import Spelling Words from a Photo - No More Typing 20 May 2026 The quickest way to set up a spelling list for home practice is to photograph it. Here's how a photo spelling app turns your child's homework sheet into a practice session in seconds.

Why Spelling Matters in KS1 - And How to Make Practice Fun 1 May 2026 Practical tips for parents on helping Year 1 and Year 2 children build spelling confidence without the tears.