Room 3’s Blog

Check out SpellingCity.com!

Thanks to janenicholls for putting this site on Twitter and to KJ for writing about it on his blog, Welcome to NCS-Tech.

SpellingCity features a dead-simple UI: enter the words and then press Test Me, Teach Me, or Play a Game. You have to see this to believe it! For “Test Me,” you get a place to spell the word plus the ability to hear the word spoken by itself and also in a context-correct sentence! Truly amazing! But wait, there’s more! Select a sound effect to change the pronunciation (my favorite: backwards!) Intrigued by this word-recognition feature, I decided just for fun to see how it would handle some unusual words. Here’s what I went with:

Riboflavin (any Pete & Pete fans out there?)
Xenophobe
Egalitarian
Blogger

I was disappointed (but not surprised) to discover these words were NOT in their dictionary. (I would pay money to hear the site use ‘riboflavin’ in a sentence!) I was very impressed how it handled more common words that would typically be on an elementary spelling list.
Watch for misspellings, though; I intentionally put “dgo” in for “dog” and the system thought I was spelling “go.” The site owners have blocked common obscenities, a nice touch. They even offer support forums!

It gets better! “Teach me” reads the word, spells it, and uses it in a sentence! “Play a Game” gives you a wide variety of quick and easy games based on the list of words you enter. The best part of all is teachers create your own account and manage spelling lists your students can access at home!

This site is really, really fun. Kids will love it and play for hours – memorizing those spelling words along the way! With an interactive whiteboard, this site will turn your spelling practice from drudgery to the most fun they’ll have all day short of recess!

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