Full disclosure: Due to my enthusiastic tweeting and parent communication of my class' use of the FREE elements of VocabularySpellingCity, the site reached out to me and offered my students a free premium membership for the upcoming year. I was not asked by the site to blog about it or sing its praises in exchange for this membership ($49.99). I think the site has a lot to offer and I think other teachers and students can benefit from using it.
I discovered VocabularySpellingCity quite by accident. I had to retrieve the lower grade's COW (Computers on Wheels) from the 3rd grade teacher who had used the laptops earlier in the morning. While trying to navigate the mammoth and ridiculously hard to steer cart, I noticed a personalized student certificate laying on top. The certificate congratulated the student for their achievement on a recent spelling test and indicated the number and percentage of words that the student spelled correctly. In the corner was the VocabularySpellingCity logo and address. That was all I needed to start exploring.
Nancy, from VocabularySpellingCity describes the site as "a free educational website that allows teachers and parents to register, enter, and save their student's own word lists that the students can then use to play a variety of fun, interactive learning games." Registration is easy and free, only requiring an email and some school information that helps users find their class' list later on. Once registered, a teacher can create a custom message to their students and parents, welcoming them to the class' lists.
List creation is simple. You can easily add word spaces individually, by 5's or 10's. Provide a name, description, pick a grade level for your list and enter the words in the field individually or in a batch with the words separated by commas. Once all the words are entered, the teacher can choose to have the list displayed as entered, random, or in alphabetical order. The site sorts them automatically. Be sure to 'publish' your list so that it appears on your page and can be searchable.
The next step, Word & Sentence Identification, is a really nice feature of the site. The site allows the teacher to choose the word's definition and usage in a sentence. The site also allows sentences to be customized so that they can match lessons or vocabulary usage in the classroom. For example, you might be teaching homophones during the week, you could chose or create sentences that make the lessons clearer or to help struggling students.
Once you have a list created, students can practice words and meanings through a great variety of activities and games. I always have my students start with the teach me feature. The 'Teach Me' feature not only displays the spelling word letter by letter as its dictated by a real person, it then uses the word in a sentence. The student can review the word (by clicking on it) as many times as they wish, or can advance to the next word. The student chooses the pace for their learning. A teacher can use the 'Teach Me' feature a number of ways. For handwriting practice, I had
the computer dictate the word as the students wrote the word as it was said.
I created a sample list for you to try here: YourKidsTeacher
Free activities include Match-it, Which Word, Word Search, Alphabetize, and our class' favorite HangMouse, a hangman-like game in which the student try to guess the correct letter before the cat catches the mouse. Premium games include Vocabulary testing, Word-O-Rama, Letter Fall (lots of fun!), and Speedy Speller that supplements your regular keyboarding practice. (I also used BBC Dance Mat Typing quite a bit last year).
The 'Test Me' feature scores student tests and stores them by student id.The speller can review which words they missed and receive a Certificate issued by Miss Write and John Spellcheck. Neat!
A Premium membership ($49.99) gives your students access to premium game activities, flash cards, and expanded vocabulary features. The biggest benefits of a Premium membership might be its unlimited list management feature and the automated student record keeping. These features allow a teacher to save paper resources and precious time.
The site also does a great job at generating special holiday and content area (St Patrick's Day, science, math, etc) word lists that adds some fun into the usual spelling routine. The site's Teacher Resources section has a lot of resources that helps further student learning. Included in this section is the Teacher forum, an area to share ideas and share class lists that can save a teacher even more time. Tweet
I'm a teacher for a number of reasons and I know that 'love of children' is supposed to be at the top of the list, but it's not. There are a number of reasons why I choose to make a difference in children's lives as a teacher. For me, the profession can't be reduced down to simple hugs though. For a number of years I was happy to make a difference in the life of just one child, my son.
I like to tell people that the reason my wife and I have only one child is because you can only hit the lottery once. The boy has always been perfect. He possesses a great demeanor, a tremendous sense of justice, is conscientious, caring, kind, and is a gentle, sensitive soul. I've thought for a long time that I should do my best to not screw up what is innate in him. If I could do that and have him still wanting to talk to me at age 24, I will have succeeded at least in part in helping him get off on the right start. Being a Dad is certainly more than just getting a child off on the right start, but as the old saying goes 'you can only construct a building one brick at a time.'
When I came home from my last day of work recently, our different school systems shared the same last day of class, I called out "Where's my new eighth grader?" It was an attempt to congratulate and recognize his accomplishment at the same time. As soon as the words left my mouth, I immediately wished he was three years old again. A rare emotion that hadn't made its presence known in years rushed to the forefront of my thoughts and I had to fight a lump in my throat.
The same feeling made an appearance at his ninth birthday while I tried to sing the 'Birthday Song' to him just before blowing out his candles. At that moment of celebration, I realized that half of my daily life with him was past and I began to weep mid-song. The thought that once he reached 18 years old, I would no longer have the luxury of spending part of everyday with him and it made me instantly sad. College, work, family, and other adventures would then get his daily attention. Time with Dad would be occasional and almost certainly somewhat infrequent. An event, not routine.
I've tried to be aware of my limited daily time with him since he was born and made conscious efforts to not take for granted my time with him. Time matters. I don't believe in the concept of 'quality time'. I think that my son deserves 'quantity time.' Life moments occur from being there, going there, doing something, and even the mundane with your kid. I try to be aware that setting a positive example on how to be a good person is something that is important and long lasting.
When he was younger he helped me occasionally repair some neighborhood boy’s bikes. My son would 'work' on his bike while I attended to flat tires, stripped stems, loose seats, etc. The five brothers lived with their grandma at the end of the block. We knew one of the boys because he attended school with my son. Xavier was a quiet and polite boy, easily one of the smallest kids amongst his peers. We knew his brothers because of their volume. We also knew them because our driveway was the perfect turnaround pad for a scorching bike trip to the end of the street. There was no doubt they were instructed to not go further than the house on the corner. One day I stopped one of the older boys because his handlebars were dangerously loose. I could see how he struggled to keep the bars in place on the deteriorating sidewalk, with its bumps and cracks, in our neighborhood. With a makeshift shim and a hefty wrist crank over torque, the bike was at least a little safer than when I started repair. Soon, the boys were stopping by frequently to have their mechanical needs taken care of. Occasionally, I bought some tubes, used some lube, pumped-up some tires, and twisted some wrenches to keep the brothers rolling. Even though I wasn’t aware, my son was witness to these minor efforts to help somebody else’s child remarking one time, “that it was nice of me to help them out.” He also said “that it was nice to have a Dad that could fix things.”
I’m reminded of these boys as we get ready to celebrate Father’s Day, because I know that not all kids are able to spend the day with their father. I asked Xavier one day, if his Dad knew how to fix anything similar to the way I knew how to fix bicycles. His pause in answering made me realize that I probably shouldn’t have asked. The awkward silence hung for a moment, then he replied, “I don’t know who my father is.” It was a good thing I had sunglasses on.
I’m not going to pretend to be anybody’s father, but I can be a figure of importance to children. Being a teacher allows me the opportunity to impact children’s lives on a daily basis, to help kids get better, and lead better lives. I don’t make a lot, but I make a difference. That’s important to me. It is also important for those kids who didn’t win the Dad lottery.
