How the platform works

The shape of the platform

Spello has two sides: the play app that children use, and the dashboard that parents, teachers and school admins use. They live on different web addresses so the two audiences never see each other's interface.

• play.spello.uk — the child game. Touch-first, colourful, designed for independent use.
• manage.spello.uk — the adult dashboard. Progress reports, class management, word-list tools, billing.

Inside one family or school account there can be many children and several adults. Children are always added by an adult; children can't create their own accounts.

What a session looks like

A practice session is normally 20 words and takes 5–10 minutes. Each word is presented in one of five ways, picked to match how familiar the child is with that specific word:

• Listen and type — the sentence is read aloud and the child types the missing word from scratch.
• Flash card — the word appears on screen briefly, then disappears and the child types it from memory.
• Multiple choice — four spellings to pick from; useful for introducing a new word.
• Letter arrange — letters of the word are scrambled as tiles; the child drags them into order.
• Letter guess — a hangman-style reveal, offered as a treat once a word is mastered.

The first time a child ever meets a word they'll see gentler formats (flash card, multiple choice, letter arrange). After a few encounters those give way to the harder "listen and type" recall, which is where real spelling confidence is built.

There's a longer walkthrough of each format, with examples and the reasoning behind it, on the five games inside Spello page.

How words are chosen

Spello uses spaced repetition — the same technique flashcard apps like Anki or Duolingo use. For every word the child has tried, Spello tracks:

• how well they've got it (from "learning" through "reviewing" to "mastered"),
• how long since they last saw it, and
• when it should ideally come back round.

When picking the next word in a session, Spello prefers, in order: overdue review words, words still being learned, new words the child hasn't met yet, and then a random fallback if none of those apply. This mix means every session revisits recent struggles while introducing new material at a manageable pace.

For the full picture of the science — spaced repetition, mastery levels, how spelling age is calculated — see How Spello works.

Game kinds

Children can choose between several kinds of session. All use the same underlying word selection — they just narrow the pool to different sources:

• Practice — the default. A mix of statutory curriculum words, teacher-assigned lists, and (for school accounts) this week's class spellings.
• Tricky words — statutory common-exception words only, at the child's current year level.
• Weekly spellings — for school accounts, just this week's class list.
• Topics & spelling rules — a single chosen word list.

Coins, streaks and collectables

Children earn coins for correct answers (5 per word, with small bonuses for speed and accuracy). Coins unlock collectable cards — animated characters with their own music — which are displayed in a personal gallery. A streak counter rewards coming back to play on consecutive days.

The motivation loop is deliberately gentle: no leaderboards, no public scores, no forced timers. Children compete only with their own past performance.

What adults see

From the dashboard at manage.spello.uk, a parent or teacher can open any child's profile to see:

• a heatmap of every word they've met and how well they know it,
• progress timelines for mastery, working level and time played,
• recent session history, and
• the child's current "spelling age" (parents only — never shown to children).

School accounts additionally get class-level views, weekly spelling lists, bulk CSV pupil imports, and printable onboarding documents.

Safety & privacy

Spello is designed to the ICO Children's Code. We collect the minimum personal data a child needs — first name, month and year of birth, username — and nothing about their school, location, surname or appearance. There are no advertising or marketing trackers, and no public profiles. We use an error-reporting service to tell us when something breaks in the app; anything it captures is covered by our privacy policy.

Full details are in our privacy policy.