The spelling app built on how children actually learn to spell

SpellCast is a spelling app for UK primary schools and families, covering every statutory word on the National Curriculum from Reception to Year 6. It takes the weekly word list and turns it into a wizard-themed game children genuinely choose to open. Underneath that game, it runs the methods reading research has spent forty years proving: retrieval practice and spaced repetition.

Why the weekly list doesn't stick

The problem with the Friday test isn't testing. Retrieval, recalling a word from memory rather than copying it, is one of the most powerful learning tools we have. The problem is timing. A list crammed across one week and tested once produces brittle memory that fades within a fortnight. Children pass the test, then misspell the same words in their writing two weeks later. Every primary teacher has watched it happen.

The fix is not more practice. It is better-timed practice. SpellCast tracks the words each child gets wrong and brings them back at widening intervals, days later and then weeks later, at the moment the child is about to forget. As they improve, the words get harder automatically, so every session sits at the right level: challenging, never crushing. There is no marking and no scheduling, and no extra workload for the teacher.

Why English spelling is genuinely hard

English is a deep orthography. Around 44 sounds are written with roughly 250 letter combinations, and the vocabulary is layered with Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek and French. That depth is why pure phonics only takes a child so far, and why morphology matters: understanding that “sign” and “signal” share a root explains the silent g where sounding it out cannot. Skilled spellers do not memorise word shapes like pictures. They bind a word's sounds, letters and meaning into a single stable representation, which is what lets them spell words they have only met a handful of times. SpellCast is designed around how that binding actually forms, rather than around rote repetition.

A game children choose to play

None of the science matters if a child won't do it on a wet Tuesday. So SpellCast reads each word aloud in a clear British voice, inside a real sentence to disambiguate homophones, and the child spells it to cast spells, earn points, and unlock dragons, unicorns and magical familiars across an adventure that levels up as they do. The pedagogy is invisible. What the child experiences is a game worth coming back to.

The evidence, early but real

We launched in April 2026, so our data is young and we say so plainly. Even so, the early signal is strong, and it comes entirely from real production use with all test and demo accounts removed.

Across more than 12,000 first attempts, children's spelling accuracy improves by more than 15 percentage points as they practise a word across sessions. 87% of children using SpellCast at home return for more sessions without being asked, during term time and alongside their existing homework. At our first school, 94% of pupils were practising within their first fortnight. Voluntary return, and take-up at that level, are the clearest early signs that a tool is genuinely useful rather than simply imposed. We will publish fuller results after the summer and autumn terms, when the first complete cohort of school data is in. We would rather share honest, caveated early evidence than a polished claim we cannot stand behind.

Built for families and for schools

At home, SpellCast gives parents a five-minute routine their child will actually do, and a clear view of which words have been mastered, without the nightly argument over the list. Families start with a free 14-day trial, then pay £2.99 a month or £19.99 a year for the whole family.

In school, SpellCast is one price for everything: £399 a year for the whole school, unlimited pupils, with no per-pupil costs and no pay-extra modules. Teachers get bulk class setup in minutes, a live leaderboard for the classroom display, and a simple view of who has practised and who needs support. Schools begin with a free six-week trial, and the demo login arrives within a working day, with no meeting required.

Free first, because that is the right order

Every word list, worksheet, dictation set, morphology pack and parent guide on this site is free. No email gate and no sign-up. That was a deliberate choice. If SpellCast becomes genuinely useful to the primary literacy community first, the product earns its place rather than buying it. The free resources are not a funnel trick. They are the point.

Safe by design

For schools and parents, trust matters as much as features. SpellCast is ICO-registered and DPA-compliant, with a DPIA and safeguarding statements available for data protection officers. It carries no advertising and no in-app purchases, so nothing interrupts or upsells a child. It collects minimal personal data and supports the OpenDyslexic font for accessibility, with UK English throughout.

Why we built it

I'm Sam, the founder of SpellCast. I'm not a teacher by background. I built SpellCast after spending a long time in the research on how children actually learn to spell, and being struck by the gap between what the evidence says works and what most spelling practice still looks like. The science is settled and not especially controversial. The hard part is turning it into something a child wants to do. That is the problem SpellCast sets out to solve: evidence-based spelling, disguised as a game children choose.

What's next

We are working with our first schools, deepening the resource library, and publishing our efficacy data openly as it matures. The goal is long-term and simple: become the spelling tool that UK primary teachers and parents trust, by being genuinely useful and honest about what the numbers show.