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EdTechIdeas by Keith Ferrell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Ed Tech Ideas
Tech Integration for Busy Teachers
Spelling City in the Classroom
Posted by on March 15, 2011
I recently revisited Spelling City and thought it deserved another post. The layout and simplicity of Spelling City has greatly improved, and with the additions of a teacher resource section and forum, there is a lot of help for those who want to turn their students into better spellers. You begin by entering your words that you want to work on. You can enter the words individually, in groups of 5 or 10, or you can batch import by simply doing a copy/paste from Word.
Take a Test
In the “Take a Test” section, once the words are entered, you can take a test, where each word is read and used in a sentence. You type it out, hit enter, and go on to the next word. The site checks your answers and lets you know if you are correct.
Teach Me
Another option is to use the “Teach Me” section, where the Spelling City teacher says the word, spells it, and uses it in a sentence. Note: the computer voice is not perfect and occasionally mispronounces words.
Spelling Games
The game section of Spelling City contains nearly 2 dozen games which incorporate your words that you entered in your initial word list. 7 of these games are only for premium subscribers ($24.99/yr for a family $49.99/yr for a classroom Learn more), but there are plenty of free games to keep students busy learning their words.
Conclusion
All in all, Spelling City is a great resource to use in the classroom as part of a spelling program, or for students to use for home learning. The site is clear, concise, engaging, and will help students learn words in a fun way.
4 Responses to Spelling City in the Classroom
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EdTechIdeas by Keith Ferrell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
VocabularySpellingCity is fabulous; it has really helped change my student’s attitude towards spelling and their grades are improving, they think they are playing when they are really learning. My student’s favorite activates are Unscramble, HangMouse, and SpeedySpeller (Premium Membership). I also like they can work on more than just spelling such as analogies, handwriting, Science and Math vocabulary. I am so thankful for VSC and think every teacher should use it!
HI keith. I just stopped by to tell you about our three big additions this past spring and summer. I think (of course I would) they merit a new review:
Digital flash cards for studying vocabulary or spelling. Also, students or teachers can print out paper flashcards. From ten to a page or big ones two to a page.
A Crossword Puzzle Generator which works with whatever spelling list you have saved. Again, the crossword puzzle can be played online or printed for handouts. I hear that this is frequently used on a whiteboard.
Assignments. Premium Members can assign specific lists and activities to specific students, groups of students or by class. When the student logs in, the assignments are there. The teacher has reports who has finished, who hasn’t. We rolled it out in September. Very popular.
Oh, one more thing.
While we’ve made many upgrades and additions, the single most popular one that we’ve done in a year was the addition of math vocabulary word lists for each grade in the teacher resources section. Teachers can import these lists right onto their home pages.
Hi, Thanks for the second write-up. We really appreciate it. We rely almost entirely on word of mouth so these posts on respected blogs really help us get the word out.
Mind if I throw in a few thoughts from the Mayor’s Office?
We’ve worked really hard this past year to enlarge the site and we renamed it: VocabularySpellingCity.com. The new materials include 50K new definitions that we wrote; a number of new games such asWord-O-Rama. Test your skills, feel the drama, it’s time to play, WORD O RAMA!!!, parts of speech, and three others. We’ve also carefully selected one sentence for each usage of a word (scale, for instance, has five common usages); and rewritten and rerecorded 35,000 sentences to have more context-rich sentences.
Shortly, we will add digital and printable flashcards, followed by…. In any case, we have many new features in the works. Please come by quarterly to check out the additions.