Skip to content
SpellingTestMaker

How to run a weekly spelling test

The mechanics of dictating a list, marking it in a way a child can act on, and doing something useful with the words that come back wrong.

One word per line, or paste a comma-separated list. Numbering and bullets are stripped. A sentence after a pipe is read out with the word.

Your list, the answers and any name you type stay in this browser — nothing is uploaded. The built-in lists are compiled by spelling pattern, not issued by a curriculum authority. Check this before you rely on it. This spelling test maker is provided free and without warranty, and its results are not professional advice.

SpellingTestMaker spelling test

Name ____________________ Date ____________

Listen to each word and write it on the line. Put your name at the top first.

SpellingTestMaker spelling test

Name ____________________ Date ____________

Look at the word, cover it, write it, then check. Repeat any you get wrong.

  1.  
  2.  
  3.  
  4.  
  5.  
  6.  
  7.  
  8.  
  9.  
  10.  
  11.  
  12.  
  13.  
  14.  
  15.  
  16.  
  17.  
  18.  
  19.  
  20.  

Spelling certificate

Awarded to

 

SpellingTestMaker spelling test

Score ______ out of ______

Date ____________

Say the word, then a sentence, then the word again

The three-part pattern is not a flourish. The first saying tells the child which word is coming; the sentence disambiguates it and fixes the grammatical form, which is the only way read and red, or advice and advise, can be told apart out loud; the repeat catches the child who was still finishing the previous answer and heard none of it. Skip the sentence and roughly one word in ten becomes a guess.

Leave a real gap after the second saying. Adults consistently dictate too fast, because they are reading the list rather than writing it. A useful trick is to write the word yourself in longhand while you wait — when you have finished, so has almost everybody.

How many words, and how often

Ten is the number most schools land on and it is a good one: short enough to test in five minutes, long enough that the score means something. Twelve to fifteen suits a confident nine- or ten-year-old. Past twenty the test stops measuring spelling and starts measuring stamina and handwriting.

A weekly rhythm beats a daily one for retention, but only if the words come back. The highest-value habit available is keeping a running list of every word a child has ever missed and slipping three of them into each new test. Words that are genuinely learned drop out; words that are not keep reappearing until they are.

Marking it without discouraging anybody

Mark the letters, not the child. "Eight out of ten, and both misses were the same ie pattern" is a sentence a nine-year-old can act on; "eight out of ten" on its own is a number they can only feel something about. The review screen here underlines the first letter that diverged for exactly that reason — most wrong spellings are right for two-thirds of their length, and showing that is the difference between a correction and a rebuke.

Retest only the misses. Running the whole list again wastes the eight the child already knew and buries the two they did not, and it is the commonest way a five-minute test becomes twenty minutes nobody enjoyed.

When the same word comes back wrong every week

A word that has survived four weekly tests is not going to fall to a fifth. Something about it is being stored wrong, and the fix is to change what the child is doing rather than to repeat it louder. Have them spell it aloud while writing it — saying the letters recruits a different memory route from copying them — and exaggerate the swallowed syllable on purpose: WED-nes-day, sep-A-rate, gov-ERN-ment.

Mnemonics earn the eye-roll they get only when they attach to a specific letter rather than to the whole word. "There is a rat in separate" fixes one vowel, and that vowel was the error. Spelling because out as a phrase fixes eight letters at once, which is why most adults still hear it in their head thirty years later.

Common questions

Should the child see the word before the test?

Before, yes — that is what the practice modes and the printed word list are for. During, no. A test the child can read the answer off measures copying, and copying is a skill they already have.

Is it better to test on paper or on screen?

On paper for anything that gets graded, because handwriting the word is part of what is being learned. On screen for practice, because the marking is instant and a child will do three rounds unprompted. Both come out of the same list here.

What score should I be aiming for?

Around eight or nine out of ten on the day. A class averaging ten is being given words it already knows, and a child scoring under five has been handed a list too far ahead of where they are. In both cases the list is wrong rather than the child.

Do spelling tests actually work?

A test on its own does very little. A test, plus retrieval practice during the week, plus the missed words returning weeks later, does a great deal. The evidence is about spaced retrieval rather than about the Friday ritual, which is why the retry-the-misses button matters more than the score does.

Other lists and guides