A free spelling tool for dyslexic students in schools

What it costs and what it needs

Nothing, and almost nothing. There is no license to approve, no trial that expires and no card to enter. Students open the site on a laptop with a keyboard and start typing. No admin rights, no software install.

There are no class lists or teacher dashboards today, and this page will not pretend there are.

How a learning support teacher uses it

• Place each student. The placement test finds which phonics patterns are already secure, so a fifteen-year-old is not started on "cat".
• Match the pattern to the lesson. If this week is vowel teams, the student practices vowel teams. The pattern list follows the order an Orton-Gillingham tutor would teach.
• Ten minutes, often. Short daily sessions beat a weekly hour for spelling. Nothing is timed, so a slow typist is not punished for being slow.
• Read the review list. A word typed correctly after a pause of more than a second and a half is flagged, as are errors. Those words return until they are right three times running. The list of what keeps returning is the most useful thing the tool produces for a teacher.

Built for the students it is for

• Adjustable font, text size and letter spacing
• High contrast and dark mode
• Recorded British and American voices, with adjustable speed
• Dictation mode: hear the word and type it without seeing it
• No timer, no leaderboard, no points, nothing that flashes

Student data

Typing is checked in the browser. Individual keystrokes are never sent to a server. Only a summary of each session is stored, in the student's own account if they have one. The privacy policy lists what that includes.

What it does not do

• No teacher dashboard yet. Progress lives on the student's results screen.
• It cannot diagnose dyslexia or replace an assessment.
• It covers spelling only, not reading, comprehension or writing.
• It does not teach touch typing or measure words per minute.

Want the school features when they exist?

Try it on one student first. If it earns a place, leave an address and I will tell you if a classroom version is ready to try.

Questions people ask

Is LexiKey really free for schools?

Yes. There is no license, no trial that expires and nothing to buy. The free version is the whole tool. A classroom version for teachers may come later, and may be paid for; the practice itself is free now.

Is there a teacher dashboard?

Not yet. Progress is stored in each student's own free account and shown on their results screen, including their accuracy and the words they hesitated on. A teacher sees it by looking at the student's screen.

What age range is it for?

The words run from three-letter short-vowel words to multisyllable words like 'wonderful' and 'receive', so it covers upper primary through secondary. The screen is plain, with no cartoons.

Do students need accounts?

No account is needed to start practicing. A free account saves progress between sessions and across devices. Signing in is handled by Clerk; see the privacy policy for what is stored.

What does the IT department need to do?

Nothing to install and no admin rights. It runs in a web browser on any laptop with a keyboard. Students' keystrokes are checked in the browser and never sent to a server; only a summary of each session is saved.