How to Use Learning Support Mode for Children Who Need Extra Structure During Spelling Practice

Learning Support is a per-child toggle in SpellCrush that enables two features: Focus Mode and difficulty check-ins. Both are off by default for all children, and neither affects XP, rewards, or how words are graded. They change only the environment in which practice happens.

This post explains what each feature does, the reasoning behind it, and who is likely to benefit. It also covers how to enable the setting and what to watch for once it's on.

Premium feature

Learning Support requires an active Premium subscription. Enable it by editing any child's profile from the parent dashboard.

Who Learning Support Is Designed For

Standard spelling practice assumes a child can sustain attention across a session, monitor their own engagement, and tolerate the visual complexity of a typical practice screen. For many children, this is fine. For others, these assumptions cause practice to break down before real learning can happen.

Learning Support is likely to help children who show any of the following during spelling practice:

Get distracted mid-word

They start typing and then look up, click around, or seem to forget what they were doing. The visual busyness of the screen competes with the task itself.

Rush through without thinking

Practice becomes a speed-clicking exercise rather than a moment of genuine recall. Sessions end quickly but retention is poor.

Struggle to self-monitor difficulty

They can't reliably tell you which words they found hard versus easy. Everything feels the same, or they underestimate how much they struggled.

Become frustrated or shut down

The session feels overwhelming before it starts. Too much on screen creates cognitive overload before the first word appears.

These patterns are common in children with attention or working-memory challenges — but they also appear in younger children, children going through stressful periods, and children who simply find spelling harder than their peers. Learning Support is not diagnostic. It's a practical tool for any child who would benefit from a more structured practice environment.

Focus Mode: Reducing Visual Noise at the Right Moment

A spelling practice session has two distinct phases per word: the active typing phase, and everything else (hearing the word, seeing feedback, deciding to move on). Most of the session controls — the session header, navigation, action buttons — are relevant during the "everything else" phase but are pure distraction during active typing.

Focus Mode acts on this distinction. When a child starts typing, the session header and action buttons fade out. When typing stops — or when feedback is shown — they immediately reappear. The child's input and the word they're spelling are the only things visible at the moment of peak cognitive effort.

What changes with Focus Mode on

While the child is typing

→Session header fades out
→Action buttons fade out
→Word, input field, and visual aid remain visible

The moment typing stops

→Everything immediately reappears
→Feedback, XP, and controls are fully visible
→No hidden information during feedback phase

The child controls it too

When Learning Support is enabled, a crosshair button appears in the practice toolbar throughout the entire session. Your child can toggle Focus Mode on or off at any point — they are not locked into it. This matters because some children will want to disable it on familiar words and re-enable it when a harder word appears.

Default state when first enabled

Focus Mode starts ON the first time Learning Support is activated. If your child tries it and finds it disorienting — some children prefer having all controls visible — they can disable it immediately. The setting persists for the session but resets to ON at the start of each new session.

Difficulty Check-ins: Building Self-Awareness One Tap at a Time

Every 6 correct answers, a full-screen card briefly interrupts practice with a single question:

Check-in

How tricky was “TERRITORY”?

One tap. Practice continues immediately. The whole thing takes under three seconds.

Why only after correct answers?

The check-in fires after correct words only — never after a word that was revealed or skipped. This is intentional. Asking "how tricky was that?" immediately after a child has just failed a word adds frustration on top of frustration. The question makes most sense when the child has just demonstrated some competence with the word: did it feel easy, meaning they've genuinely mastered it? Or did they get it right this time but it still felt difficult?

Why every 6 words, not every word?

A check-in after every single correct answer would quickly become annoying and interrupt the rhythm of practice. Every 6 words creates a natural pause — infrequent enough to feel like a break rather than a tax, frequent enough to generate useful data and keep the self-monitoring habit active throughout the session.

What happens to the answers?

Check-in responses feed into how words are prioritised in future sessions. A word that a child repeatedly rates "Hard" even after answering correctly will be scheduled to return sooner. A word rated "Easy" multiple times can recede from rotation faster. This is the groundwork for spaced repetition — using the child's own signal alongside the objective correct/incorrect data to decide what needs more practice.

The metacognitive benefit

Beyond the data, the act of pausing to ask "how tricky was that?" is itself valuable. Many children who struggle with attention have difficulty noticing their own cognitive state — they don't naturally distinguish between "I found that easy" and "I got lucky that time." Brief, structured check-ins teach this distinction. Over weeks of practice, children who use them tend to develop a more accurate sense of which words they genuinely know versus which words they're still guessing at.

Improvements Every Child Gets (Not Gated)

Two improvements shipped to every child regardless of Learning Support status. They are worth knowing about because they address a specific frustration that affects children with and without attention challenges.

Accurate mistake highlighting

When a word is revealed after three failed attempts, the correct spelling now highlights only the actual mistake letters in red — not everything after the first error. A Longest Common Subsequence algorithm finds the minimal difference between what the child typed and the correct word.

Child typed: TERITORY

TERRITORY

Only the missing R is marked — not everything after it

All three attempts shown

All three of the child's wrong attempts are now displayed above the correct spelling when a word is revealed, each with its own mistake highlighting. The child sees exactly where they went wrong across all attempts before seeing the answer.

Previously, only the most recent attempt was visible. Seeing all three shows whether errors were consistent (a genuine misconception) or scattered (an attention or rushing problem) — useful information for both the child and the parent.

How to Enable Learning Support

Open the child's card

From your parent dashboard, find the child's card and click the pencil (edit) icon.

Scroll to Learning Support

The Learning Support toggle is below the Hide Age & Grade setting. It includes a ? tooltip that explains what it does.

Toggle on and save

Switch it on and save the profile. A teal 🎯 Learning Support badge appears on the child's card to confirm it's active.

It takes effect immediately

The next practice session this child starts will have Focus Mode on by default and difficulty check-ins active.

You can turn it off at any time

Disabling Learning Support in the child's profile removes both Focus Mode and difficulty check-ins from their next session. No data is lost — previous check-in responses are retained.

What to Watch For in the First Few Sessions

Learning Support changes the environment, not the difficulty. Some children take to it immediately; others need a session or two to adjust.

Signs it's helping

Sessions feel calmer — less clicking around between words
The child uses the Focus Mode toggle intentionally
Check-in responses are varied (not just 'Easy' for everything)
Fewer revealed words per session over several weeks
The child mentions the check-in unprompted

If it's not clicking

If Focus Mode feels disorienting: let the child disable it for a session and try again later
If check-ins are always 'Easy': talk through a session together once to model honest self-assessment
If sessions are still chaotic: combine Learning Support with a fixed daily time and consistent location
If the child is very young: check-ins may be confusing — Learning Support is most effective from around age 7

The Short Version

Learning Support is two things: a way to reduce visual distraction at the exact moment it matters most, and a habit of structured self-reflection built into practice a few times per session.

Neither feature changes what words a child sees, how fast they progress, or how XP and rewards work. They change only the environment — making it quieter during active typing and prompting a brief pause for self-assessment after every six correct answers.

If your child struggles to stay engaged during spelling practice — whether because of attention challenges, working-memory demands, or simply finding the screen overwhelming — Learning Support is worth trying. It takes about 30 seconds to enable, and it costs nothing to disable if it's not the right fit.

Try Learning Support with Your Child

Learning Support is available on all Premium plans. Enable it in under a minute from your parent dashboard. Pair it with AI hints, visual memory aids, and adaptive difficulty for a spelling practice environment that works with how your child actually learns.

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