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I love that many of the activities are printable so that I can provide extra homework practice for students each night. Each week I use the Handwriting Worksheets to help students become more familiar with the way their words are spelled, but also to help students practice how letters are formed and joined. We also work on the Crossword Puzzle that can be generated from each week's words as a way to help develop our vocabulary. The Word Unscramble and the Alphabetize activities are two other options that can be printed out to provide extra practice.
But, the most fun of all - and probably the best practice activities are the interactive games. The class LOVES to play "Hangmouse" and we've had some rousing versions of the game. I must admit that even I get a bit nervous when the cat starts opening his eyes and unsheathing his claws. We all root for the mouse to survive each of his efforts to steal the cheese!
This fall our class discovered how much fun WordFind is. Once a student figures out the correct word from among the scrambled letters, they then attempt to make all the small words they can create with the given letters. It's a great challenge to see who can make the longest correctly spelled word from the letters available.
We are all changing over to the Common Core State Standards and Spelling City supports many of the CCSS in Language Arts and in the Content areas. When I click on the standards search and search for Vermont Common Core State Standards, it opens up a printable drop down list of standards (with interactive links) that are covered by Spelling City. Just so you know, my list is three printed pages long! WOW! Next week we are going to work on reviewing parts of speech. Know what I am going to use? Take a peek!
Among my favorite books is Brain Rules by John Medina. One of his twelve brain rules is "Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things". Spelling City is definitely NOT BORING! The games keep students engaged with their jazzy music and fast paced activity. Another of the brain rules is "Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses". The bright colors and moving objects make the activities appealing and memorable.
For students who have access to i Pads, there is now a Spelling City App. There is a new Android app available through the Google Play store. There is even a Kindle app available through the Amazon App Store! Students can get access to all the activities any place they can access their electronic devices. It's wonderful!
Finally, I like how I can create individual accounts for each student and then check up on their progress as they study their words each week. It's easy to see which activities they have used and how successful they were. If a student is not spending enough time studying it's easily evident and it's helpful to be able to show students this information too.
Thank you SpellingCity! We LOVE you!
Disclosure: I received a year subscription in exchange for my honest thoughts. All opinions are my own.
I was provided with a premium membership free of charge for this review. However, all opinions are mine and reflect my honest use of the product in the classroom.
I received VocabularySpellingCity.com at no cost to me, in order to complete an honest review. All opinions are my own.
