🇳🇿 ✏️ New Zealand · Year 6

Free Year 6 spelling and grammar test

Find out in 10 minutes. Free.

This free Year 6 spelling and grammar test takes about 10 minutes. Your child answers 20 questions on spelling, word building, sound-alike words, punctuation and grammar, getting easier or harder as they go. You get a report of what they are confident with and what to practise next, matched to the New Zealand Curriculum.

  • Free and no sign-up to start
  • Matched to your curriculum
  • Made by teachers at 70+ Success Tutoring centres in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and India

Start the free check

Where do you live?

Questions follow the New Zealand Curriculum.

No sign-up needed. About 10 minutes. Best done with your child, on any phone, tablet or computer.

What Year 6 children learn in maths

In Year 6, children spell words with silent letters and unusual patterns, choose between confusable words like affect and effect, use brackets, colons and commas for clauses, and write complex sentences.

What the Year 6 check looks at

Spelling

Spelling common and tricky words for their year, and spotting a misspelt word in a sentence.

  • Choose the correct spelling
  • Spot the misspelt word

Curriculum: NZ Curriculum: Writing (spelling)

Try at home: Pick three tricky words a week. your child looks, says, covers, writes and checks each one, then uses it in a sentence.

Word building

Plurals, prefixes, suffixes and word roots, and the spelling rules for joining them.

  • Plurals and suffixes
  • Prefixes, roots and word parts

Curriculum: NZ Curriculum: Writing (word knowledge)

Try at home: Play “add a bit”: take a word like help and see how many words your child can build (helpful, helping, unhelpful).

Sound-alike words

Words that sound the same but mean different things, like there, their and they’re.

  • Sound-alike words (1)
  • Sound-alike words (2)

Curriculum: NZ Curriculum: Writing (spelling)

Try at home: Make a silly sentence for each tricky pair, such as “Their dog is over there”, and stick it on the fridge.

Punctuation

Capital letters, end marks, commas, apostrophes and quotation marks.

  • Punctuation (1)
  • Punctuation (2)

Curriculum: NZ Curriculum: Writing (punctuation)

Try at home: When your child writes, ask them to read it aloud and add a mark wherever their voice stops or changes.

Grammar

Word types, tenses, joining words and writing sentences that make sense.

  • Grammar (1)
  • Grammar (2)

Curriculum: NZ Curriculum: Writing (grammar)

Try at home: Ask your child to spot nouns, verbs and adjectives in a favourite book, then swap one to change the sentence.

Try some Year 6 questions

These are the kind of questions in the check. Every check has fresh numbers, so your child will not have seen them before.

Spelling

Which spelling is correct?
“The ___ makes laws for the country.”

  • government
  • governmant
  • goverment
  • govenment
Show the answer

government. The correct spelling is “government”: The government makes laws for the country.

Word building

Which word means able to be relied on?

  • reliable
  • reliabel
  • relyable
  • reliible
Show the answer

reliable. Change the y to i, then add -able.

Sound-alike words

Which word fits?
“The storm will ___ our plans.”

  • affect
  • effect
Show the answer

affect. “Affect” is usually the verb: to change something.

How it works

  1. Your child answers about 20 questions. They get easier or harder as they go, so nobody gets stuck on a wall of hard questions.
  2. See how they’re going. On track, a little behind, or needs support, for their year level.
  3. Get the full report. Strengths and gaps in 5 areas, emailed to you, plus a free assessment at your nearest Success Tutoring centre if you’d like one.

Start the free Year 6 check →

Questions parents ask

What spelling words should a Year 6 child know?

See “What Year 6 children learn” above and the sample questions. Spelling lists vary by school, so the test checks common words and the patterns behind them, which matter more than any one list.

Does it test grammar and punctuation too?

Yes. Alongside spelling it checks word building (prefixes and suffixes), sound-alike words like there and their, punctuation, and grammar at the level expected in Year 6.

Is it free?

Yes. The test and the full report are free, and there is no sign-up to start.

Why multiple choice for spelling?

Choosing the right spelling and spotting a misspelt word use the same knowledge as writing it, and they work on any phone. A teacher at a free assessment will also look at your child’s own writing.

How can we practise spelling at home?

A few words a week, little and often: look, say, cover, write, check. Talk about the pattern in each word (why hopping has two p letters) rather than just memorising lists.

Other year levels

Year 2 · Year 3 · Year 4 · Year 5 · Year 6 · Year 7

🇦🇺 Australia: Year 5 · 🇺🇸 United States: 5th Grade · Free Year 6 learning games