Spelling Test Practice
Hear the word in a sentence, type it, and see how many of twenty you get right.
Grade 1: sh, ch and th, blends like frog, and the magic e in cake
The ____ sailed across the sea.
Press Start to hear your first word.
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Game information
- Price
- Free
- Skills
- SpellingListeningPhonics
- Players
- 1 player
- Platforms
- Phone / Tablet / Computer
How to play Spelling Test Practice
Choose a grade and a level, then press Start. The game reads each word like a teacher reading a spelling test: the word, a sentence that uses it, and the word again. The sentence is on the screen too, with the word left out, and a row of boxes shows how many letters it has. Type the word on your keyboard, or on the keyboard that opens on a phone or tablet. When the last box is filled the answer is checked by itself.
Get it right and the boxes turn green. Get it wrong and the right spelling is shown in the boxes for a moment, then the next word comes, so the test keeps moving. Hear it again replays the word and the sentence, Hint fills in the next letter, and Skip shows the word and moves on. There are twenty words in a round, and the finish card lists the ones to practice again.
Spelling words by grade
Each grade follows the spelling patterns children meet that year, from short vowel words in kindergarten to Greek and Latin roots in Grade 5. Easy, Medium and Hard each have their own list of words, so a child can move up inside a grade before moving to the next one.
- Kindergarten: short vowel words like cat and dog, and first sight words.
- Grade 1: sh, ch and th, blends like frog, and the magic e in cake.
- Grade 2: vowel teams like rain, r words like bird, and -ed and -ing.
- Grade 3: longer words, prefixes and suffixes, and silent letters.
- Grade 4: -tion and -ous endings, double letters, and ie and ei.
- Grade 5: -ible and -ence, Greek and Latin roots, tricky words.
The lists are our own, built on those patterns rather than copied from any one textbook, so they fit alongside whatever list a school sends home. If your child's teacher sets a weekly list, practice those words on paper and use these rounds to keep the patterns behind them fresh.
Why hearing the word matters
A real spelling test is a listening test: the child has to turn the sounds they hear into letters, without seeing the word first. That is harder than copying, and it is the skill that shows up in everyday writing. Hearing the word in a sentence also settles which word is meant. We left out words that sound like another word, such as there and their, because no amount of listening can tell them apart. Those belong in a reading game, and our spelling quiz covers tricky spellings you choose between.
No voice? Look, cover, spell
If the sound is off, or the device has no voice installed, the game switches to look, cover, spell. Each word appears for a few seconds, then disappears, and the child spells it from memory. It is a classic way to practice spelling, and it lets the game work in a quiet classroom. For more ways to practice, our spelling games for kids mix in word puzzles, unscrambling and guessing games.
Questions parents and teachers ask
How does the spelling test work?
Press Start and the game reads the first word the way a teacher does: the word, a sentence that uses it, then the word again. Type it on your keyboard; the boxes show how many letters it has. When the last box is filled the answer is checked straight away, with no button to press. A right answer gets a cheer, a wrong one shows the correct spelling, and either way the next word follows, twenty words in a round.
Which words are on each grade?
Kindergarten practices short vowel words like cat and dog, and first sight words. Grade 1 practices sh, ch and th, blends like frog, and the magic e in cake. Grade 2 practices vowel teams like rain, r words like bird, and -ed and -ing. Grade 3 practices longer words, prefixes and suffixes, and silent letters. Grade 4 practices -tion and -ous endings, double letters, and ie and ei. Grade 5 practices -ible and -ence, Greek and Latin roots, tricky words. Each grade has Easy, Medium and Hard lists, and Easy is where every round starts.
Why does the game leave out words like there and their?
Because a spoken test cannot tell them apart. When you only hear a word, there, their and they are sound the same, and so do sun and son or right and write. We left out every word that sounds like another word, and words that can be said two ways like read and wind, so a child is never marked wrong for spelling the other word correctly.
What if the computer cannot speak or the sound is off?
Then the game switches to look, cover, spell: the word appears for a few seconds, disappears, and the child spells it from memory. It is a well known way to practice spelling on its own, and it means the game still works in a quiet classroom or on a device with no voice installed.
How should we use this for a weekly spelling test?
Play one round of the right grade on two or three days in the week, a few minutes each. The finish card lists every word that was missed, with what was typed, so you can practice those on paper before the real test. Move up a level when twenty out of twenty starts to feel easy.