1. This sentence has ONE spelling mistake:
"The whole familly walked down to the jetty."
Type the correct spelling of the misspelt word.
ICAS Spelling Paper A (Year 3)
Paper A is the entry level of ICAS Spelling, sat by Year 3 students. Entry is through your child's school, an ICAS testing centre or an ICAS partner, not through us.
Last updated: 17 October 2026
Four kinds of question, not one list
Unlike a school spelling test, the paper asks for spelling in four ways:
| Kind of question | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Dictation | A word is played in a sentence through headphones; spell it |
| Rules and conventions | Multiple choice about how spelling works |
| Proofreading | Find the word that is wrong |
| Correcting | Find it and fix it |
ICAS doesn't publish how many questions of each kind a paper has, or the order they come in.
Forty questions in 40 minutes — a minute a question, on a shorter clock than the Maths, English and Science papers at this level.
The skill a spelling list doesn't train
Proofreading, and the reason is worth understanding.
Spotting that a word is misspelt is a different skill from spelling it correctly, and it is the one almost never practised. A weekly spelling test asks a child to produce words they have studied. Proofreading asks them to look at ordinary text and notice that something is off — including words they have never studied.
Children who ace their spelling list can still miss the error in a proofreading question.
What Year 3 spelling content shows up
Common digraphs, plurals with -s and -es, compound words, simple prefixes and suffixes, and high-frequency words. The rules and conventions questions ask about the pattern rather than the word: not "spell babies" but "why does baby change to babies".
A note on dictation
In the real test, students hear the dictated words through headphones. Our Paper A practice starts with dictated words: your child plays each recording and types the word, so have headphones ready.
What the mark will look like
ICAS marks run lower than school tests by design. The paper keeps stretching students well past year level, so a result that looks disappointing on a school scale can be a strong ICAS result — read it against the distribution rather than as a percentage.
How to prepare for Paper A
Read something together and hunt for a deliberate mistake you have made in it. Five minutes of that trains proofreading better than another spelling list.
Common questions
Which year level sits ICAS Paper A?
Year 3. ICAS names its papers by letter rather than by year — Paper A is Year 3 and Paper F is Year 8 — so a Year 3 student sits Paper A.
How long is Spelling Paper A?
40 questions in 40 minutes.
Are the dictated words read aloud?
Not by a person — in the real test, students hear each word through headphones. In our practice, your child plays a recording of each dictated word, so headphones help.
Year 3 also sits: Maths Paper A · English Paper A · Science Paper A
Sample questions
Try each one first, then open the answer and worked solution under it.
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: family
Say the word slowly: fam-i-ly. The middle i is easy to miss because it is barely sounded.
Only one l is needed — the y ending does not double the letter before it.
That gives family.
'family' is the correct spelling.
2. Which sentence uses the plural correctly?
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: D
Every sentence starts with the two, so each one needs a plural.
Woman is one of the old words that changes its middle vowel instead of taking an ending: woman becomes women.
That rules out womans and womens, which add an ending as well, and woman, which is still singular. Only women is right.
'The two women carried the ladder between them.' is correct.
3. This sentence has ONE spelling mistake:
"The doctor explained the treatmant in plain words."
Type the correct spelling of the misspelt word.
Answer and worked solution
Correct answer: treatment
The suffix is -ment, spelt m-e-n-t.
It is added straight onto treat.
That gives treatment.
'treatment' is the correct spelling.
Practise free, no account needed. Every paper is marked the moment your child finishes, with a worked solution on every question.
Free practice draws from a limited set of questions, so some will repeat. Subscribers get the full question bank and fewer repeats.
Related papers: Spelling Paper B (Year 4)
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