I've finally taken the plunge and had a go at using Spelling City. This is a great website which is designed to help children to practise their spellings.
Inspired by http://www.spellingcity.com/mrbarberturnham/ I created an account for our school and uploaded the spellings for the SATs spelling tests from 1996 to 2009.
The process was very easy to do - literally, as easy as typing in the words. The site then creates a sentence which uses the word to put it in context.
The children can go to the site and practice the spellings. Words are read out for them to spell! Simple, yet brilliant!
You can find our SATs Spelling lists at www.spellingcity.com/churchlane.
I was happy to discover your blog today. I was unable to find a contact link in your blog. I hope it's OK that I'm contacting you through a public comment. I've developed an educational program for Windows called SpellQuizzer that helps children learn their spelling and vocabulary words without the battle that parents often have getting them to sit down and write them out while the parents dictate to them. The parent enters the child's spelling words into the software making a sound recording of each word. Then the software helps the child practice his or her words. It really helped my children with their weekly spelling lists. It really helped my children prepare for their weekly spelling lists.
ReplyDeleteI see that you have already blogged about SpellingCity.com. SpellingCity is indeed an excellent free tool for teachers and parents. But there are some advantages that SpellQuizzer offers over SpellingCity.com:
- SpellQuizzer doesn't require an open Internet connection. Many parents and educators prefer not to have their young children working on a computer with an open Internet connection due to all the undesirable material that is on the Internet. With SpellQuizzer there is no need to expose children to the world wide web.
- SpellingCity.com doesn't have recordings of all the words one might wish to practice. For those it does have the sentences used aren't personalized. With SpellQuizzer you can make spelling lists for literally any words (or even facts) you wish your child to practice with. The recordings you make are in your voice rather than a stranger's. And you can personalize the recordings and even make them funny with an amusing sentence or funny voice. I always try to throw in some funny ones for my daughters such as "Handsome: Your daddy is the most handsome man on earth." That one got snickers. :-)
- SpellingCity.com may well be around for ever. Or it may go down for good tomorrow. There's no way to know for certain. A person who purchases a license for SpellQuizzer has the software for life whether I stay in business or not.
As I said, SpellingCity.com is an excellent free resource and I don't mean to attack it in any way with what I've said above. I'm only pointing out reasons one might prefer a product like SpellQuizzer. I would appreciate your reviewing SpellQuizzer in Year Six Teacher. You can learn more about the program at http://www.SpellQuizzer.com. There's a video demo you can watch at http://www.spellquizzer.com/SpellQuizzer-Demo.htm. Finally, there's a page targeted to homeschooling families at http://www.spellquizzer.com/spelling-software-for-homeschoolers.htm. I'd be happy to send you a complimentary license for the software. Please let me know if you are interested.
Thank you very much!
Dan Hite
TedCo Software
http://www.SpellQuizzer.com
What a great resource. Thanks for signposting it.
ReplyDeleteThis is massively helpful! As a teacher new to Year 6 this is just the kind of idea which makes me sleep easier at night! Thank you
ReplyDelete