When our children do the Spelling Test sections they sometimes only have 5 spellings for their test. Any ideas why this happens? 

Generally, on “own word lists”,  words will only appear in the spelling test if they have a picture associated with them. 

• For a short list of up to 5 words, with just 3 having pictures, the spelling test would comprise of just these 3 words. If one mistake were made, you would score 2  (out of 3) and the error would be shown.  If you got all 3 shown, you would be given a score of 5 (no errors being flagged). i.e. a “bonus” for being 100% correct.

• For a longer list of up to 10 words, again just the words with pictures would be given in the spelling test, so a list of 9 words, only 7 with pictures, would give a spelling test out of 7.

• It is therefore very helpful if each word in an “own word list” can have a picture associated with it, though I appreciate this is not always appropriate.

For our own word lists, these will normally be fewer than 10 words (usually 7-9).  A score of 6, with 2 words in red, means a score of 6 out of 8 (2 errors)