Our fifth in-depth look at the ICAS assessments is here! ICAS Spelling Bee is a unique assessment offered the same week as ICAS Science. But what benefits does this assessment offer and how can your child be successful in it?
What is ICAS Spelling Bee?
This assessment tests a student’s ability to spell words correctly in the context of dictation, applying rules and conventions, proofreading and error correction. The assessment has 35-50 questions, depending on paper level, and runs for 40 minutes. Spelling Bee is offered for NZ students from Year 3 (Introductory paper) to Year 8 (paper E), and is available at Focus Education.
Why sit this assessment?
Spelling is a fundamental area of knowledge for written communication, whether as writers or readers. Misspelling creates confusion in the reader and they are more likely to doubt the knowledge and professionalism of the writer. Even in these days of auto-correct, students need accurate spelling knowledge for their foundational vocabulary, especially when creating formal essays and other sophisticated texts. This includes such niche vocabulary as technical jargon, scientific and mathematical concepts, and culture-dependent words.
What does the assessment cover?
Students are asked questions in a variety of forms such as listening to a word and spelling it, matching an image to the correct word, or identifying correct or incorrect spelling from a prompt. You can view the detailed assessment framework on the ICAS website here. The Spelling Bee assessment includes words that are easy, as well as medium difficulty, and challenging for the year level. The assessment covers four types of spelling knowledge:
- Visual or orthographical
- Phonological
- Morphemic
- Etymological
Some highlights we noticed here at Focus: The assessment includes commonly confused words such as homophones, spelling of foreign words and technical terms, as well as spelling adjustments when manipulating words by adding suffixes.
How can my child prepare for this assessment?
The best preparation for ICAS Spelling Bee involves a close attention to spelling and vocabulary in different contexts.
- Use a past paper or the sample tool available here to help your child become more familiar with the kinds of questions asked and how to answer them in a digital environment.
- Expose your child to written texts that have a range of challenging vocabulary. This helps them to learn the shape and usage of words and expand their vocabulary generally.
- Use online tools such as Vocabulary.com which provide spelling quizzes.
- Ask your child to write sentences, stories and paragraphs using challenging vocabulary. This forces them to check spelling and learn by experience.
Technical requirements for this assessment
Some schools and centres may provide a device, whereas others may require you to bring a device for your child. ICAS Spelling Bee is one of the two ICAS assessments that require a special locked-down browser (Writing is the other one). This means that in addition to the device meeting the usual technical requirements, which you can check here, you will also need to download the locked-down browser. You can find instructions on this here. Bear in mind that if your child has a device that is managed by their school, only the school will be able to download the browser. ICAS Spelling Bee also requires a pair of headphones for the dictation portion of the assessment. We suggest checking the technical setup of your device well in advance of the sitting date for the assessment.
A final note
If you choose to register your child for ICAS Spelling Bee at Focus Education, you can find all the registration information along with sitting dates here. Please also ask us about pre-assessment support.
Look out for our last in this series – ICAS In Depth: Maths – coming soon!
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