Effective Literacy Website #5

 

IRA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #5

Website & URL: https://www.spellingcity.com/

Vocabulary Spelling City is an award- winning game-based website and app used to build K- 12 literacy skills in vocabulary, spelling, phonics, and writing. It offers more than 40 activities that help students hear, say, write, break down and play with words. Vocabulary Spelling City was initially created to save teachers time by automating spelling practice tests and to empower students to study independently through engaging game-based learning activities. Engaging activities can be customized for students at every learning level and teachers can creating their own word lists or using any of the thousands created by Vocabulary Spelling City. This website promotes literacy because it provides a wide variety of study tools and activities for developing strong vocabulary skills, vocabulary retention and best practices for effective vocabulary word instruction. Research has proven that these are the key factors that improve reading fluency and comprehension.

Vocabulary Spelling City has a free version, a Premium Membership or a free 30 day trial. With the free version, teachers and parents are able to create and save word lists or import lists from the Teaching Resources section. They are also able to create a homepage for students. Students are able to search for their teacher or parents’ word list and utilize a sufficient amount of learning games and activities. Those games and activities include Spelling TestMe, Sppelling TeachMe, Audio Word Match, Missing Letter, Test-N-Teach, Word Search, HangMouse, Read-A-Word and Handwriting worksheets. Vocabulary Spelling City also has a Premium Membership, where members have access to everything Vocabulary Spelling City has to offer! With the Premium Membership, members have access to automated grading and progress tracking, personal student list where students can save their own word lists, the option to create class/ individual review lists based on students’ test results, the ability to create custom assignments for students, access to writing practice activities and instructional videos, grouping, access to much more games and activities. Teachers can purchase a Classroom Premium Membership for up to 25 students for $69.95. If needed, additional student licenses can be purchased for $2.70 per student. Parents can also purchase a Family Premium Membership for up to five students for $35.95.

Vocabulary Spelling City is an effective literacy tool because it helps students practice spelling and retain vocabulary words, which, in turn, improves their reading fluency and comprehension.