Spelling.Live is more than a practice app - a weekly plan, an AI coach, and reporting built around how children actually spell, at home and in class.
Everything a parent needs to turn a school spelling list into a week of practice that runs itself - and to see exactly how it went.
The same word can be handwritten on screen, typed, spelled aloud, picked from look-alikes, traced, or written on real paper and photographed. Each route exercises a different memory - recognition, recall and production - and the plan mixes them across the week.
Benefit: a word met five different ways sticks far better than one drilled the same way five times.Write it mode checks each handwritten word for spelling and letter formation - shape, reversals, spacing - with genuine UK continuous-cursive tracing fonts for children who join their letters, and on-device recognition in the native app for instant marking.
Benefit: practice matches the Friday test, which is still written by hand.A ready-made week spreads Look, hear & remember, Pick it, Type it, Write it, Say it, Word Parts, Word Meanings, games, Paper practice and the Dictation test across the days that suit your child - every day editable.
Benefit: you never have to plan what to practise, only change what you want.Every list you add is queued straight into the Learning plan, and you choose how the plan runs. A Weekly rhythm gives one practice a day with games after and a "done for today". A Fluid rhythm keeps the same plan without the daily wall - sessions unlock one after another, so a child can do two in a row, or none today. Classic drops the plan entirely and lets them pick a list and activity any time.
Benefit: a school-week schedule for term time, a fluid pace for holidays or catch-up - one tap to switch.A wrong answer never just shows the right one. Help arrives a step at a time - a flash of the word, or a coached tip about the exact mistake - and your child always gets one clean, unaided first try.
Benefit: no dead ends, and no guessing how much help is too much.Spaced repetition brings each child's weakest words back automatically, wrong answers get harder or gentler to match their stage, and the Skills Check picks the right National Curriculum year band on its own.
Benefit: practice always meets your child where they are - never too easy, never too hard.Every early-years word gets its own memory picture, generated by AI and shown alongside the spelling - and once any family unlocks a word's picture, every child gets it instantly from then on. Parents can refine the prompt and regenerate.
Benefit: a visual hook for children who can't yet read a written hint.Long words are hand-checked down to their real prefixes, roots and suffixes. "Disappointment" becomes dis + appoint + ment, and Word Parts has your child build it from the pieces, then spot what changes where they join.
Benefit: 14 letters to memorise blind becomes 3 pieces that make sense.Every mistake is classified into the real reason behind it - a sound mix-up, a look-alike letter, a structure or a rule - and the coach explains that pattern using your child's own history, not generic advice.
Benefit: "wrong again" becomes "oh, that's why" - a reason, not just a red cross.Balloon Pop, Word Search, Boggle, Letter Maze and more are drawn from your child's own tricky words, not a generic word bank. Coins come only from spelling practice, a parent sets game prices and plays, and a child can challenge a friend or sibling to beat their score on the same words.
Benefit: the games stay a treat that keeps the practice going, not the main event.Photograph the school sheet or a whole term's spelling log book, paste text, type words, pick a National Curriculum preset (KS1 common exception words, KS2 statutory lists), generate an age-matched list on any topic, or let Suggest from progress build one from your child's own tricky words. Mastered lists can be hidden to keep the focus.
Benefit: setting up practice takes seconds, never longer than practising.Generate an API key in your account, set up a shortcut once, and say "Hey Siri, add spellings to Maya" - the words go straight into the right child's list, audio and hints included. Works with Siri Shortcuts, Google Assistant or any automation tool.
Benefit: this week's words are in before the book bag is even unpacked.Every word added is screened for safety and reviewed against UK English spelling before your child ever practises it - flagged words are shown to you to confirm or remove, never silently blocked. American spellings are corrected and you're told.
Benefit: peace of mind that what's in the list is what should be there.An AI-written summary lands in your inbox with sessions and active days, accuracy, the tricky words, which practice modes they used (recognition vs recall vs writing), games played and whether they used the coach. Add a co-parent or teacher as an extra recipient, each with their own unsubscribe.
Benefit: you know how it's going without logging in and digging.Tricky words are grouped under the rule behind them - the schwa they keep dropping, the y-to-i they miss - across sound, look, structure and rule, with recurring slips named (letters swapped, dropped, added) and how a long word is built shown alongside.
Benefit: "got necessary wrong four times" becomes the one thing to teach next.Progress is mapped onto the National Curriculum's own spelling rules (English Appendix 1), year by year, with pattern badges that only count unaided, written spelling - and a "practise this" list one tap from any statement.
Benefit: you see exactly which rules are secure, not just a percentage score.A per-letter Formation report shows which letters need work - shape, reversals, proportion - and the Writing report for older children profiles joins, slant, baseline, spacing and legibility, from on-screen writing and photographed paper alike.
Benefit: handwriting improves where it counts, not just "neater please".A feature-based spelling inventory - typed, on paper, or written on screen - works out which patterns your child has mastered and which to work on next, then builds the focus list automatically. Free, and pitched at their school year.
Benefit: start from what's actually tricky, not from a generic level.Every automatic choice the app makes about a child's practice is written to a plain-English log you can read, every AI mark is shown in an editable review before it's saved, and every piece of AI text carries a "Report this" link that a real person reads.
Benefit: you can always see what the app decided, and overrule it.Answer "what does this child need right now?" - stretch, balanced or confidence - and switch each practice mode on or off per child: Pick it, Type it, Write it (handwriting) and Say it (voice). What's off never appears on their screen.
Benefit: a reluctant writer isn't forced into Write it, a fluent one isn't stuck on Pick it.Allow or hide each hint pill - Picture, Definition, Spelling hint, Synonyms - and the Flash word button mode by mode. "Help when stuck" sets the aid ladder's style (show the word, or coach it) and pace (quick, standard, or wrestle with it), plus how many test retries a child gets.
Benefit: exactly as much help as this child needs this week, and no more.Ruled lines and faint letters to trace on the early-years writing pad, a cursive toggle, Handwriting analysis on or off (it drives the Formation report), and Gentler handwriting messages for a child who needs kinder marking.
Benefit: the pad matches how their school teaches writing, and how they feel about it.Reading font (Standard, Clear, OpenDyslexic), text size, letter spacing (Standard, Relaxed, Roomy), a colour overlay (cream, blue, rose, mint, grey) with a live preview, speech speed (Normal, Slow, Slower) and Show pictures automatically for early readers - all per child.
Benefit: a dyslexic child reads the word the way it works for them.An unlock code (parent PIN) on the parent menu, a child's own device login so they can practise alone, leaderboard opt-in with a display name you choose, and practice reminder emails to every linked parent after a set number of quiet days.
Benefit: independence for the child, oversight for the grown-ups.Game prices & plays for the whole household, "give games free today" and "adjust today's practice" on each child's plan, weekly or monthly progress email frequency, extra report recipients, and a Teacher / tutor role that unlocks class tools.
Benefit: lighten a bad day or reward a good one, without touching the plan.One parent account holds every child, each with their own lists, plan, settings and report. Controls work per child behind an optional parent PIN - which practice modes are on, hints, marking gentleness, low-pressure games - so one sibling's setup never leaks into another's.
Benefit: the app fits each child, not the household average.Parent-managed accounts only - children can't self-register. Your data is never used to train AI, photos and voice are processed in the moment and discarded, and you get one-tap export and one-tap delete. Built to the UK GDPR and the Children's Code.
Benefit: privacy you can check, not just a promise.A public register lists every AI provider the app uses, what each one receives and its training stance, re-reviewed on a schedule - see the AI providers & your data page. The DPIA and Children's Code self-assessment are available on request.
Benefit: a school's data-protection questions are already answered.One focus outline everywhere, genuinely readable contrast, reduced motion honoured across the app, VoiceOver and Voice Control labelling, a Screen-reader friendly games toggle, and a Low-pressure mode that removes timers, streaks and leaderboard prompts from the games - all per child. See the accessibility statement.
Benefit: the standard is the floor here, not the finish line.Native apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, plus the same account in any browser - the same children, lists and reports wherever you open it, with a child login option so they can practise on their own device.
Benefit: practise on the tablet, check the report on your phone.Everything above runs per pupil automatically, plus the tools a class or a tutoring practice needs to set up, assign and mark at scale.
Create pupil logins in bulk with no email addresses needed, then print login labels - each with a QR code a grown-up scans to sign the pupil in, and passwords that survive a reprint. Pupils who already use Spelling.Live at home join your class without a new account.
Benefit: a class is practising the same day you set it up, not the same week.Assign a list to the whole class or individual pupils with a due date and a note - typed, photographed, picked from the curriculum presets, or generated from a topic - and it lands in each pupil's own Learning plan, on a weekly or fluid rhythm, not in a separate homework app.
Benefit: one assignment reaches the whole class, already in their week.Print personalised QR-coded test sheets plus a teacher's script with every word in a sentence, run the dictation on paper as a class, then scan the stack - AI reads and marks every pupil's sheet in one batch, flagging only the handful it wasn't sure about.
Benefit: one scan replaces marking thirty papers by hand.Accuracy and tricky words roll up across the whole group so you can see which patterns catch everyone out, and the Curriculum view shows which National Curriculum statements have been covered - while every pupil keeps their own individual report at home.
Benefit: planning and parents'-evening evidence, mapped to Appendix 1.Audio, definitions and picture hints are generated once per word and reused by every pupil and class that meets it afterwards - a list assigned to thirty pupils doesn't generate its content thirty times.
Benefit: no per-pupil delay or cost once a word has been used before.The aid ladder, adaptive difficulty, spaced repetition and the AI coach all run individually for every pupil inside a shared class list, so a class of thirty each gets their own pace automatically.
Benefit: differentiation happens by itself, with no extra planning per pupil.A parent can invite a co-parent or a tutor to see and edit a child's word lists and weekly plan, and a teacher can add extra recipients to the progress email - so everyone supporting a child works from the same plan.
Benefit: home and school pull in the same direction.Want the day-by-day walkthrough instead? Read how it works.
Running a class or tutoring group? See the full Teachers & Classes guide, or the tutor welcome offer.