ICAS Spelling

Find out more about the spelling skills assessed at each year of schooling, download the ICAS - Spelling assessment framework PDF
Download Spelling practice questions
Hints and tips for participating in ICAS

The International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) – Spelling is an independent spelling assessment developed in conjunction with Macquarie Dictionary. It assesses and reports students’ skills at spelling words in four different contexts: dictation, proofreading, error correction and applying rules and conventions.

The words tested range from frequently-used/common words with simple spelling patterns to less frequently-used/less common and technical words with difficult or unusual spelling patterns. These words can be organised under four types of spelling knowledge:

visual - using memory of the visual features of a word
phonological - using sound-letter relationships
morphological - using parts of words to build word families
etymological - using word origins and derivations.

The level of difficulty of the words assessed increases both within a paper and from Paper A to Paper E. Each paper contains some words that are easy to spell for students at the year level, some that are of medium difficulty and some that are quite hard and challenging for students at the year level.

To find out more about the spelling skills assessed at each year of schooling in ICAS, download the ICAS - Spelling assessment framework PDF .

See ICAS test details for practical information including test dates, entry fees and year levels assessed in your country.

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