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Every week, someone has to decide what the spelling list is. In a school with a bought-in scheme, that decision is already made. In a lot of schools it isn't: the teacher picks words from the curriculum on a Sunday night, or reuses last year's sheet, or works through a pattern that seemed most urgent. At home, a parent who wants to help between school lists has even less to go on.
Spelling.Live already checks a child's spelling against the National Curriculum. It names the rule behind a mistake and shows which statements a child is secure on. What it didn't have was the other half: a plan for what to practise each week. So we built one.
What it is
The weekly scheme is a full school year of spelling lists, one per week, for Years 3, 4, 5 and 6. Each year is three terms of 12 weeks:
- Five new weeks, each teaching one spelling rule or one set of statutory words.
- A revision week at each half term, drawn from the five weeks before it.
That is 36 lists a year. Each one has a short title saying what it teaches ("ch saying /k/", "-ous: when the root word changes", "The possessive apostrophe with plurals ending in s") and usually ten words.
All four years, Year 3 to Year 6, are available now: the whole of Key Stage 2.
How it lines up with the National Curriculum
The scheme is built from English Appendix 1: Spelling, the part of the DfE's National Curriculum for England that sets out what children should be taught to spell in each year. Appendix 1 does two things, and the scheme follows both.
It sets out rules. For Years 3 and 4, and again for Years 5 and 6, Appendix 1 lists statements such as "words with the /eɪ/ sound spelt ei, eigh, or ey" or "endings which sound like /ʃəs/ spelt -cious or -tious". Every pattern week in the scheme is one of those statements, by name. Appendix 1 gives each pair of years together, so we split the Year 3/4 statements between Year 3 and Year 4, give each one two weeks in its own year, and bring it back for one more week the following year. A Year 4 child meets the Year 4 rules for the first time and revisits the Year 3 ones, so nothing taught in Year 3 is left behind. Year 5 and Year 6 do the same for their statements, and also bring back one Year 3/4 rule each half term.
It gives two statutory word lists, one for Years 3 and 4 and one for Years 5 and 6. These are the words the curriculum expects children to spell by the end of each pair of years (words like separate, February, occasionally, necessary). The scheme covers each list exactly once across its two years, in ten statutory weeks of ten words, grouped so a teacher can see why they belong together ("hidden vowels", "the e at the end", "sounds you might not expect"). No statutory word is missed, and none is set twice. Each year carries half of its pair's list, five weeks of ten words.
Homophones get their own weeks. Appendix 1 asks children to tell apart words like accept and except, or affect and effect, so those weeks always set both words of a pair together. Learning one without the other doesn't help.
How the words were chosen and checked
The rules in Appendix 1 come with a few example words, never a full list. So the remaining words in each week had to be chosen, and that is where a scheme can go quietly wrong. "ch saying /k/" is easy to illustrate with chips if you only look at the letters.
So every word in the scheme was checked against four things:
- British spelling. Every word is spelt as UK schools teach it.
- The rule's letters. A word in an -ous week contains -ous; a word in a gu week contains gu.
- The rule's sound. For sound rules, we check each word's UK pronunciation against its spelling, so the ch in a "ch saying /k/" week really does say /k/ (chorus, chemist), and the ei in an "ei saying /ay/" week really says /ay/ (vein, reign), not the sound in their. A word we can't check that way is left out rather than guessed.
- No repeats. A word appears once in a year, and words from a lower year aren't set again as if they were new.
These checks run every time the app is built, so a mistake can't creep in later. I also read through every week myself before release. A handful of the words are less common than the rest (most are plural possessives like teachers' or babies', which matter for the rule even if they're rare in reading). Teachers can swap any word they don't want, and that's where feedback from real classes will help us improve it.
Using it as a teacher
In a class, open Assign a list and choose Use a scheme. Pick the year and the term, and you'll see all 12 weeks. You can:
- untick a week you don't want,
- reorder the weeks,
- change the words in any week,
- add your own list in between, such as topic words or a list the school already uses.
Then send it. The first week starts straight away, and the rest are queued, so each pupil's next list starts on its own when their week ends. You don't have to remember to assign one every Monday. Plans are still yours to change: from the class's Assignments screen you can reorder what's queued, edit a week's words, or take a week out. Each pupil practises the list in their own way (typing, handwriting, saying it, the printed practice pack), and the class report shows which rules are catching the group out.
If you'd rather just have the lists, choose to add them to your lists instead. They're saved for you to assign whenever you like, and nothing is sent.
The weekly scheme help page walks through every step with screenshots.
Using it as a parent
Open your child's Word lists, tap Use a preset list and choose the Weekly scheme tab. It opens on your child's own school year, or the nearest year with a scheme, and you can pick another: an earlier year for revision, or a later one for a challenge. Each week is there as a ready-made list. It's useful in two ways: to follow the year alongside school, or to fill a gap when the school list hasn't come home. If your child's school already sets weekly spellings, keep using those. The scheme isn't meant to replace your school's list, only to give you something to use when you don't have one.
What it doesn't do
The scheme is a sequence of lists, not a teaching programme. It doesn't come with lesson plans, and it doesn't replace a phonics scheme in the younger years. It's also written for England's National Curriculum, so it's offered only to children set to UK English. Families using US, Australian or Indian English won't see it, because their schools teach different spellings in a different order.
If you try it with a class and something doesn't work (a word that's wrong for your pupils, or a week in the wrong order), please tell me through the feedback button in the app. The scheme is one I'd like teachers to shape.