# How to prepare for the ICAS Spelling Bee at home

> What the ICAS Spelling Bee tests for Years 2 to 7, how the awards are ranked, and a home practice plan built on daily dictation and spelling rules.

Updated 27 August 2026 · Word Wonder · https://wordwonder.web.app/articles/icas-spelling-bee-preparation

Preparing for the ICAS Spelling Bee comes down to two habits: daily audio dictation, so your child can hear a word once and spell it cold, and steady work on the spelling rules the paper tests, such as suffix changes, homophones and words borrowed from other languages. A practice paper teaches the format in an afternoon. The habits are what move the score, and they take a term.

This guide covers what the assessment contains, how the awards are decided, and a weekly plan you can run at the kitchen table with a pencil, a pair of headphones and about fifteen minutes a day.

## What the ICAS Spelling Bee tests

ICAS Spelling Bee is a digital assessment for students in Years 2 to 7 in Australia, with equivalent year levels in New Zealand and other participating countries. It is run by Janison through ICAS Assessments, and children sit it on their own device with headphones, inside a locked-down browser called Janison Replay.

Depending on year level the paper has between 35 and 50 questions and runs for 40 minutes. The official description lists four broad areas: spelling words heard through audio, applying spelling rules and conventions, commonly confused words such as homophones, and correcting errors in a passage. Words range from easy to challenging for the year level, and include technical terms and words that came into English from other languages.

## How the awards are ranked

Results are certificates, and they are set against everyone else who sat the paper in that year level and country. That distinction matters for how you talk about the goal at home.

*ICAS award bands, as published by ICAS Assessments*

| Award | Share of candidates |
| --- | --- |
| ICAS Medal | Top scorer in the year level and region |
| High Distinction | Top 1% |
| Distinction | Next 10% |
| Credit | Next 25% |
| Merit | Next 10% |
| Participation | Everyone else |

Because a Distinction is defined as the next 10% of whoever sat the paper, no tutor, workbook or app can promise one. What practice controls is the number of words on the paper your child has already met out loud, and how calmly they handle the ones they have not.

## When to start

The assessment window falls in the second half of the school year. A term of preparation is comfortable; three weeks is a cram. If you are reading this with three weeks left, skip to the weekly plan below and run it every day rather than five days a week.

Start by finding your child's real level rather than their year level. Many children in Year 5 spell like Year 3 or Year 7, and a plan pitched at the wrong band wastes the term. Ten minutes of dictation from a mixed list, marked honestly, tells you more than a school report.

## Practising the four question types

### Audio dictation

This is the core of the paper and the easiest to rehearse. Read a word aloud once, in a short sentence, then on its own. Your child writes it. Do not repeat it a third time, because the test will not. Eight to ten words a session is enough; accuracy over three weeks tells you whether to move up a band.

Use headphones for at least some sessions. A voice through headphones sounds different from a parent across the table, and children who have only ever practised the second way lose a few seconds of composure on the day.

### Spelling rules and suffixes

The paper asks children to change words: *happy* to *happiness*, *begin* to *beginning*, *argue* to *argument*. Work one rule a week. Doubling before *-ing*, dropping the silent *e*, changing *y* to *i*, and the *-tion*, *-sion* and *-cian* endings cover most of what turns up between Years 3 and 7.

### Homophones and confusables

*Their*, *there*, *they're*; *practice* and *practise*; *stationary* and *stationery*. These cannot be spelled from sound alone, so dictate them inside a sentence that fixes the meaning, and ask your child to say which one they chose and why.

### Proofreading

Some questions show a passage with an error to find. This is a reading skill as much as a spelling one. The cheapest practice is to hand over a paragraph you have typed with one deliberate mistake and ask for the word. Word Wonder does not drill this type, so keep it on paper.

## A weekly plan that fits around school

*A sample week, about fifteen minutes a day*

| Day | Activity | Time |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monday | Dictation, 8 to 10 words, headphones on | 10 min |
| Tuesday | One suffix rule: 6 words transformed, then dictated | 12 min |
| Wednesday | Dictation, new words plus Monday's misses | 10 min |
| Thursday | Homophones in sentences, 5 pairs | 10 min |
| Friday | Proofread one paragraph; dictation of the week's misses | 15 min |
| Weekend | One timed practice set in the digital format, or rest | 20 min or none |

The misses matter more than the new words. A word spelled wrong on Monday should come back on Wednesday and again the following week. That schedule is the whole point of spaced review, and it is why a short daily session beats a long Sunday one. Timothy Shanahan's summary of the research on [Reading Rockets](https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-on-literacy/how-many-times-should-students-copy-spelling-words) puts the number of exposures needed to learn a word at roughly 10 to 15 for typical readers, and 12 to 25 for children who find spelling hard.

## Where Word Wonder fits

Word Wonder runs the dictation half of this plan for you. Each word is spoken through the device, your child types it or writes it on paper and photographs the page, and words spelled wrong return on the day they are about to be forgotten. The placement test puts a Year 5 child who spells like Year 3 on Year 3 words without anyone having to say so.

[Levels 1 to 12](https://wordwonder.web.app/#levels) line up with the Years 2 to 7 range the assessment covers, and the [level-by-level word list guide](https://wordwonder.web.app/articles/spelling-bee-word-lists-by-grade) shows which patterns sit where. Set the English variant to UK, which is what Australian and New Zealand papers expect. What the app will not do is the proofreading question type or the timed digital rehearsal; those stay on paper and on the official practice tool. The [exam overview on the homepage](https://wordwonder.web.app/#exams) shows how ICAS sits beside the KS2 paper and the Scripps bee.

## Two things to avoid

The first is the list marathon: fifty words on a Sunday night, the week before the paper. It produces a tired child and no lasting spelling. The second is promising a result. Say "we're going to know more of the words than last year," which is true and measurable, and leave the certificate to the day.

If you also have a child in England, the [KS2 spelling paper works differently](https://wordwonder.web.app/articles/ks2-spelling-test-explained), with a fixed 20 words read inside sentences, and the same dictation habit carries straight across.

## Questions parents ask

**What year levels can sit the ICAS Spelling Bee?**

Years 2 to 7 in Australia, with matching year levels in New Zealand and other participating countries. Each year level gets its own paper, so a Year 3 child is never ranked against Year 7 spellers.

**Is there a past paper for the ICAS Spelling Bee?**

ICAS Assessments publishes sample questions and a practice tool that runs in the same digital format as the real paper. Use it once or twice to learn the interface, then spend the remaining time on dictation and rules, which is where marks come from.

## Sources

- [ICAS Assessments: Spelling Bee](https://www.icasassessments.com/products-icas/subjects/spelling-bee/)
- [Shanahan, How many times should students copy the spelling words?](https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/shanahan-on-literacy/how-many-times-should-students-copy-spelling-words)