Most spelling tests give you a number: 12 out of 20. That tells you how many words were wrong, but not the thing that actually helps — why, and what to do next. spelling.live's new Skills Check answers those questions instead. It's a quick check that looks at how your child spells, not just whether each word is right, and turns that into a short, targeted focus list.
Here's the theory behind it, how to use it, and what it costs (nothing).
The idea: score the patterns, not just the words
Spelling isn't one skill — it's a stack of them. Children learn, roughly in order, that letters stand for sounds (the alphabet layer), that letters group into patterns like ai, igh and silent e (the pattern layer), and that meaning shapes spelling, as in -tion or -ous (the meaning layer). This developmental picture comes from decades of literacy research — Gentry's stages of spelling development, and the "feature analysis" approach popularised by Words Their Way, which is widely used in schools.
The clever move in that research is this: instead of marking a word right or wrong, you mark the features inside it. Take night. A child who writes nite has actually got a lot right — the n, the long i sound, the t. What they're missing is one specific pattern: the silent gh. Score that word as "wrong" and you learn nothing. Score it by feature and you learn exactly what to teach.
The Skills Check does precisely this. It uses a fixed, graded list of words, each chosen to test specific patterns — short vowels, starting and ending blends, letter teams like sh and ch, magic-e, long-vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, double letters, silent letters, soft c and g, prefixes, -ing/-ed endings, and longer word endings like -tion. As your child spells, we check each pattern independently.
What you get back
At the end, you don't get a bare score. You get a profile:
- ✅ Got it — the patterns your child controls.
- 🎯 Working on — the patterns that need practice.
And then the useful part: spelling.live automatically creates a focus list built from exactly those "working on" patterns, named for what it targets (for example, "Maya's focus: silent letters"). It drops straight into your child's lists, ready to play in any of the games. No typing, no guesswork about what to practise next — the check decides for you, and the words your child slipped on also feed back into their spaced-repetition schedule so they come round again at the right time.
Why there's no "spelling age"
Plenty of tests hand you a single "spelling age" — 7 years 6 months — and parents understandably like a number. We've chosen not to, and that's deliberate.
A spelling age is a norm-referenced measure: it compares your child to a large sample of other children. To produce one honestly you need that sample, properly gathered and kept current — and even then it tells you where your child sits in a queue, not what to do on Monday morning. The Skills Check is criterion-referenced instead: it measures your child against the spelling patterns themselves. "Confident with blends, still working on silent letters" is more honest and more useful than "spelling age 7.6", because it points straight at the next step. (It's the same stance taken by serious spelling programmes that decline to fake a single number.)
A note for younger children
For ages 5–7, sit with your child for the Skills Check — it's meant to be a calm, supported few minutes together, with you helping them type what they hear, not a test they sit alone. For older, fluent readers it works well independently. You can also choose the level, so you can check a younger child on harder patterns, or take an older child back to basics if something isn't sticking.
What it costs: nothing
spelling.live runs on a free monthly allowance of AI credits, used for things like AI sentences, hints and handwriting checks. The Skills Check uses none of them.
All of the scoring — working out which patterns are right or wrong, and building the focus list — happens on your device, instantly, with no AI call. It's deterministic: the same spelling always produces the same result. The spoken words and example sentences use our shared British voice, which is cached and re-used for everyone, so in normal use you won't spend credits running it. So you can run a Skills Check as often as you like — at the start of a new term, after a holiday, whenever you want a quick read on where things stand. (Down the line we may offer an optional AI-written summary in plain English; that would use a credit, but the check and its scoring will always be free.)
How to run one
- Open your child's card and tap 🧭 Skills Check.
- Pick a level (we suggest one based on their age).
- Your child hears each word and types it — you help if they're little.
- Read the profile, and play the focus list it creates.
A couple of minutes in, a few minutes of the right practice out. That's the whole idea.