BP_4 Spelling City

What do you think would be the most boring subject for an elementary school teacher to teach?  Would you guess spelling?  Just walk down the hallways past the open doors to hear teachers of all grade levels reciting words and sentences for the weekly spelling test.  Pre-test, worksheets, final test - what a yawn.  I admit, I administer the tests and use the worksheets for homework.  I know parents who expect their children to write spelling words five times every night, whether it is assigned or not.  Shouldn’t learning, even learning to spell, be more fun than that?  Spelling City offers games to play as you learn your spelling words.  

You can choose to use the site for free, or pay a subscription fee of $49.99 per year to gain access to additional features, including automated test grading and record keeping, and what they call the Premium Games.  I don’t know if I will do that.  For now I am content with figuring out all the free stuff.  

Once you register and sign in, you can create, edit, and save your lists so your students can access them and play (I mean, study).  You can also opt o use their lists, or steal (I mean, import) lists from other teachers.

Students do not need usernames and passwords to access your lists on Spelling City.  The can search for lists by teacher’s name.  I didn’t realize there were so many teachers named Toth out there!  Once they find the right list (or the wrong one, too, for that matter) there are three buttons under the list that they can choose from:  Teach Me, Test Me, or Play Games.  Being the seasoned professional that I am, I started with the games.

Teach me and Test me are what you would expect.  In teach me, the word is displayed and pronounced, then spelled as the letters are displayed, then a sentence is read and the word repeated, just like the teacher would do.  Spelling City even has its own bank of sentences so you don’t have to add your own (although you can if you want to).  Test me sounds just like a spelling test.  Click one button to hear the word, and click another to hear the sentence.  

Last week I used the Crossword game on the SmartBoard with the whole class participating.  Students took turns entering the letters and shouting out the spelling from their seats.  They were engaged, had fun, and practiced spelling.  Next week I plan to try Sentence Writing Practice and move into Paragraph Writing Practice after we get ;more writing instruction behind us.    The sentences will be saved as a PDF file that can be saved or printed.

I think my fourth grade students will enjoy using Spelling City to help them learn spelling and improve their writing skills.  I hope this has been helpful to all the elementary school teachers who have been kind enough to read my post.