Lesson checks

While you write, the editor looks over your lesson and points out things that could trip up the speller, along with places where the lesson differs from the app's usual shape. These are the same rules an AI assistant connected to Spelling Creator is held to, so you can see what it would have been asked to fix without asking one.

Nothing here ever stops you. A lesson with problems still saves, exports, publishes and prints exactly as before.

Opening the checks

• Check, in the editor's top bar, opens the Check lesson panel. A red number beside it says how many problems the lesson has. On a phone, the same panel is Check lesson in the menu.
• The outline shows a count beside each section that has problems, so you can see where the work is left without opening anything.

The panel lists what it found, grouped by section in the order they appear in the lesson. Choosing one closes the panel, leaves Preview if you were in it, opens the section if it was folded away, and puts the cursor in the field the finding is about. A finding about one spelling word or one answer lands on that word or answer.

An empty lesson isn't checked. The panel says "Nothing to check yet. Add a section to get started."

Problems and suggestions

The panel sorts what it finds into two kinds:

• Problems are "things that would confuse the speller or mark a right answer wrong": a single answer that isn't in its passage, a spelling word hidden inside an answer, two number questions with the same answer, a multiple answers question that accepts only part of the list the passage gives. They are always listed and counted.
• Suggestions describe "the usual shape of a lesson": how many sections, how many spelling words, which questions come in which order. They start folded away behind Show N suggestions, and they are never counted in the top bar or the outline. If you wrote a three-section lesson on purpose, you only see them if you ask.

Where these rules come from

The checks encode the app's defaults. They are not rules every Spelling practitioner follows.

Many of them come from letterboard spelling, where the speller points to every letter of an answer one at a time. A long answer is real work, so the defaults keep answers short: spelling words of 6 to 9 letters, single words for the answers to a multiple answers question, and one word answers for the first few open ended questions.

The idea of "semi-open" questions (the two orange types, Multiple answers and Suggested answers) comes from the S2C (Spelling to Communicate) guidebook. The colors and the usual lesson shape (six sections, four spelling words a section and fifteen questions in a set order) are the app's own defaults.

Practitioners who follow a different Spelling practice, or none in particular, may well make different choices. That's fine. Ignore any suggestion that doesn't fit how you work. A few conventions show up as problems rather than suggestions (a spelling word's length, for example, or heavy formatting), and you can ignore those too: they never block anything.

What gets checked

Answers and their passage

• A Single answer question's answer is written word for word in the section's text.
• A Multiple answers question asks for the items of one list the passage gives, uses the passage's own words, and accepts every item in that list. If you want the speller to answer in their own words, the panel suggests making it a Suggested answers question instead.
• A Background knowledge question asks about something the passage doesn't say.
• A fill in the blank Number answer question has its number in the text.

Answers that give each other away

• A question that names another question's answer, so the speller can copy it across.
• A spelling word that appears inside an answer, so the warm up gives the answer away.
• The same answer word, or the same number, used for two questions.

Spelling words

• Each is 6 to 9 letters long and isn't listed twice, in this section or another.
• It isn't already capitalized vocabulary in the passage (a suggestion).
• Four a section is the usual number (a suggestion).

Question wording

• "A word that comes to mind" has been used so much it has become a habit, so the panel asks for an everyday category instead ("Name something found in a hospital").
• A Would you rather question starts "Would you rather" and offers two options, or a short list joined by one "or".
• A Multiple answers question quotes the passage's sentence with the list blanked out ("The blast sent out ______.") and doesn't give its own answers away.
• Every answer to an orange question (Multiple answers or Suggested answers) is a single word.
• A Multiple answers question accepts 2 to 4 answers, and a Suggested answers question suggests at least one, so whoever is scoring knows what would count.

The usual lesson shape (all suggestions)

• Six sections.
• In each section: 3 Single answer, 2 Number answer, 2 Multiple answers or Suggested answers, 1 Background knowledge, then 7 Open ended (4 quick ones followed by 3 longer ones).
• One of the two number questions is a word problem with worked steps.
• The VAKT activity comes at the end of the section.
• A section with no questions yet.

Formatting

Capitals already mark the vocabulary, so the checks point out bold, underlining, and formatting on capitalized words. They also flag a section where too much of the text is formatted, and long runs of bold, underlining or italics.

Footnotes

A footnote that cites a source the lesson doesn't have.

Fixing findings

Some findings have a button under them that fixes the problem straight away. The panel stays open, and the finding drops off the list a moment later.

Button	What it does
Remove the bold	Takes bold off the section's text. Italics and underlining stay.
Remove the underlining	The same for underlining.
Remove the formatting	Unformats the capitalized words only.
Remove all formatting in this section	Removes every kind of formatting in the section's text, italics included.
Make it plain	Unformats the one long run of formatting the finding quotes.
Move it to the end	Moves the section's VAKT activities to its end, keeping their order.
Swap them	Puts the Multiple answers question before the Suggested answers one.
Accept "silt" too	Adds the item the passage's list goes on to as an accepted answer. A two-word item adds its last word.

After a fix, a line at the top of the panel says Fixed. with an Undo button. It stays until you change the lesson again. After that, every fix is still its own entry in Version history, where Undo this change takes it back.

If you click a fix for something that has already been fixed (by you a moment ago, or by someone editing with you), a message says "That's already fixed. The list is catching up."

Most findings need judgment instead, such as whether to change an answer or the passage it should be in. Those get Fix with AI, which shows you the fix before making it. See AI lesson fixes.

Facts

Below the problems and suggestions, the panel has a Facts section that compares the numbers, dates and names in your passages with Wikidata, the Smithsonian's record of volcanoes and Wikipedia. It only runs when you press Check facts, and nothing it finds is counted in the top bar or the outline. See Fact checking.

For how the checks work in the code, see the developer notes.