Vocabulary Spelling City - How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways!

    

With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning let me tell you about Vocabulary Spelling City!  Why do I love this resource so much?  Take a look at the image  on the left.  This wonderful website offers engaging activities that help students master spelling and vocabulary.  My students love to practice their words by playing "Hang Mouse" on their computers at home, but they especially love to practice their spelling words with this activity on the Smart Board at school!  They also enjoy "Word -O-Rama" and "Letter Fall". While it's wonderful that my students can enjoy the online interaction I also like that I can print many different activities as handouts for student practice. 

During the week I generally assign a spelling practice activity each day for homework and these are all taken from Vocabulary Spelling City.  I have posted all my spelling lists on this site.  Students simply go online, select the list they are working with and select an activity to work on.  Students may complete crossword puzzles, unscramble words, practice alphabetization, or vocabulary. 

As a fifth grade teacher I want my students to practice cursive writing.  I know that soon they will develop their own distinctive styles of handwriting and I know that they will use keyboarding skills even more extensively as they grow older.  But, I feel that at this point it's important that they learn how to read and write cursive.  Then they can choose whether and when they wish to use it.  So, each week I always introduce the spelling words with a handwriting practice page from Vocabulary Spelling City.  Students can see the proper formation of letters and how they join.  They can trace each word before practicing it independently.  I think it makes a wonderful introduction to each week's lesson.  All I have to do is click on the list for the week and select  "handwriting worksheets".  This opens a dialogue box which lets me format the words to my specifications.  I choose cursive, but you may also select print or D'Nealian models, select the size, and whether or not you wish to display guide arrows to assist students.

Teaching spelling and vocabulary is so easy with this great resource!  I also love that students can take final or practice spelling and vocabulary tests right online.  Not only that but there are two tiers of use offered.  Many activities are free but there is a Premium Membership which allows automated student record keeping.  My students are thrilled when I tell them that for homework they need to go on the computer and practice their spelling.  I can later go to the Vocabulary Spelling City myself, log in and check out who has done the assignments and when they did them in addition to seeing their scores.

So, really, what's not to love about this site?

Online Learning Activities

This year, we will be using several online learning activities such as SpellingCity, XtraMath, and History Alive. Each of these sites provides extra practice for students in spelling, math, or social studies, and sometimes students will be asked to practice at one of these sites as a homework assignment.

SpellingCity is a website that helps students learn their weekly spelling words while having fun at the same time. As a teacher, I will put up my weekly spelling lists on SpellingCity and your children can review the words, and play spelling games with their words to reinforce the learning process. Simply go to www.spellingcity.com to see how the site works. You can find our class spelling lists by simply clicking on “Find a List” and typing mrsdub (all one word in lower case letters) in the search box. OR, you can simply click on the link found in the sidebar at the right of this page. The lists will appear and your child can immediately start using them to practice his or her words.

Next week we will practice the words in Lesson 6, the first review lesson encompassing words from each of the first five units. There are fifty words in the list, but students should center their studies on the focus of each week's lesson. The focus of the first five lessons has been:

Lesson 1 - words with sk, sp, and st - the generalization is that some words have two consonant letters blended together

Lesson 2 - words with ng, nk, and th - the generalization is that some words have two consonants pronounced as one sound

Lesson 3 - words with kn, mb, gh, and st - the generalization is that some words have consonant pairs that are pronounced as one sound

Lesson 4 - adding s and es - the generalization is to add s to most base words but some words require es

Lesson 5 - adding ed, ing, er, est - the generalization is that when adding these endings to a base word, the spelling may change in several different ways

Some students learn to spell easily but other students need much practice and benefit from using successful strategies to learn their spelling words. One strategy is to "discover the problem parts" of a word. This strategy helps students figure out what makes a particular word difficult for them to spell. It calls upon use of the visual modality by suggesting that the user focus on the problem part and commit to visual memory the correct spelling of that part.

Try this:

• Think about the word and mark the problem part.
• Picture the word, focus on the problem part
• Try spelling the word again