Look, say, cover, write, check: how to use it at home

Look, say, cover, write, check is a five-step way to learn a spelling. Your child looks carefully at the word, says it aloud, covers it, writes it from memory, then uncovers it and checks every letter. Done for a few minutes on several evenings with this week’s words, it is one of the simplest ways to practise spellings at home, and it needs nothing more than paper and a pencil.

This guide covers how to run it at home, how many words to take on, how to adapt it to a younger or older child, and what to try when a word keeps coming back wrong.

What is look, say, cover, write, check?

You may have seen it on a grid sent home from school, with a column for each step. Each step has its own job:

1. Look. Your child studies the word and notices anything unusual about it: a double letter, a silent letter, a sound spelt in an unexpected way.
2. Say. They say the word aloud. For tricky words they can also say it the way it is spelt, ‘Wed-nes-day’, to hear the letters that are normally silent.
3. Cover. The word disappears, under a hand, a folded flap of paper or a sticky note.
4. Write. Your child writes the word from memory. This is the step that does the work.
5. Check. They uncover the word and compare, letter by letter. If it matches, it gets a tick. If not, they look at the part that went wrong and go round again.

The heart of the method is the write step, because it is a small test. Copying a word that is still in front of you mostly exercises the hand; writing it from memory makes your child fetch the spelling, which is exactly what they will need on Friday and in their own writing. The national curriculum in England asks for this from Year 1, when pupils start writing from memory simple sentences dictated by the teacher.

How do you do look, say, cover, write, check at home?

Keep it short, and at roughly the same time each evening. A realistic session looks like this:

• Take this week’s list, from the homework diary or the spelling sheet. If the class works in groups, use your child’s group only.
• Fold a sheet of paper into columns, or use a mini whiteboard. The first column holds the word; the others stay empty for the attempts.
• Go through each word once, with all five steps. Say as little as you can: let your child do the looking and the checking.
• Put a dot next to any word that went wrong, and come back to it at the end rather than straight away.
• Stop after about ten minutes, even if some words aren’t secure yet. They will come round again tomorrow.

When your child checks, ask them to point to the letters that are different rather than telling them. Finding the mistake is part of the practice. A word with one letter out is an ‘almost’, not a failure: it shows exactly which part to look at next time.

How many spellings a night, and how often?

There is no official number. Schools set lists of different lengths, and your child’s teacher knows what their list should take. What matters more than the number is how the practice is spread out: several short sessions across the week give each word more separate goes than one long session the night before the test.

A simple week might look like this:

• Monday: go through the whole list once, with all five steps. Dot the words that went wrong.
• Tuesday and Wednesday: start with the dotted words, then do the rest.
• Thursday: a mini test. You read the words aloud and your child writes them without looking first.
• Friday: the school test. Whatever happens, any word that is still shaky goes back into next week’s practice.

For a child in Year 1 or Year 2, fewer words at a time and more help with the looking and saying is fine. An older child who already knows most of the list can skip straight to the Thursday-style test and spend the time on the words that went wrong.

How to help a child who finds spellings hard

Some children need more than the five steps. A few things are worth trying:

• Chunk long words. Split them into syllables and learn one chunk at a time: dif-fer-ent, li-bra-ry.
• Find the tricky part. A misspelt word is often wrong in just one place. In because, it is often the ‘au’. Circle that part in colour and spend the time there, not on the letters your child already gets right.
• Say it as it is spelt. ‘Feb-ru-ary’, ‘Wed-nes-day’, ‘bus-i-ness’: an exaggerated pronunciation keeps the hidden letters in mind.
• Group words by pattern. Could, should and would share their ending; caught, taught and naughty share ‘augh’. One pattern covers several words.
• Make up a sentence. A silly sentence using three of the week’s words is easier to remember than a list, and it practises writing too.
• Keep a memory trick for the worst offenders. ‘Big elephants can always understand small elephants’ spells because. Save these for the one or two words that nothing else fixes.

If spelling stays very hard despite regular practice, or reading is a struggle too, mention it to your child’s teacher. The NHS page on dyslexia says that if you think your child may have dyslexia, a useful first step is to talk to the school’s special educational needs coordinator (SENCO). Spelling difficulties can have many causes, and the school sees how your child manages in class.

Does it work for the statutory word lists?

Yes. In England, children learn common exception words in Year 1 and Year 2 (45 and 64 of them), then the statutory word lists from English Appendix 1 of the national curriculum: 100 words for Years 3 and 4, and another 100 for Years 5 and 6. We publish all four lists, word for word:

• Year 1 common exception words
• Year 2 common exception words
• Year 3 and 4 statutory word list
• Year 5 and 6 statutory word list

The appendix gives a useful reminder for the older lists: teachers should keep drawing attention to the links between sounds and letters, even when they are unusual, and once the root words are learnt, longer words follow with the right prefixes and suffixes. At home, that means learning accident before accidentally, and using a word’s family to find a silent letter, such as sign for signature.

Don’t try to learn a whole list in one go. Each one is spread across one or two school years, so stick to the words set each week.

Where Kamelo fits in

Kamelo’s paper mode for spellings follows the same idea, with one change: your child hears the word instead of seeing it. Kamelo reads the word aloud, your child writes it on paper or a whiteboard, then taps to reveal it and checks their own spelling: ‘Yes, got it!' or ‘Almost’. A word marked ‘almost’ comes back a few words later in the same session, and nothing is ever marked in red. That is close to the Thursday mini test above, and it means you don’t have to read the list out yourself.

The two fit together well. Do the look and say steps from the sheet when the list is new, then let Kamelo run the cover, write and check part on the following evenings. You photograph the homework diary or the spelling sheet, check the words Kamelo read (it takes about thirty seconds), and your child practises exactly that list for about ten minutes. Kamelo is planned for the UK in January 2027; the weekly spellings page explains how it works.