Room 3’s Blog

Have fun with a new word each day. Visit Word Imperfect to have a look at the featured word. Great for increasing your vocab knowledge and skills!

How to Play:

I choose an obscure dictionary word. You invent a wacky meaning. I put 3 invented meanings on the voting poll below and list the true meaning. There are no prizes, just lots of fun!

BTW The author of the blog is someone familar to some of you!

During our student led conferences some of you commented about your spelling ability so when I read about SpellingCity from The Tech Savy Educator, I thought it would be useful to post it here. Maybe you could start using it during the holidays and let us all know if it helped you.

I found at least 5 reasons that this site is much more than a digital worksheet, and could really lend itself well to improving vocabulary.

1. Play a Game – After typing your spelling list into the boxes it provides (you can add as many boxes as you need), you can play a spelling game in which every word is given with it’s pronunciation and used in a sentence. NOT textually, but verbally; actual people have made actual recordings of the words you put in, so you can click on a button and hear a human voice say the word, and even hear them use the word correctly in a sentence, very much like a spelling bee. If you get words wrong, you can always try the “Teach Me” button, and the site will spell out the words you missed while also giving you the sentences they’re used in.

2. Share Spelling Lists – The site is completely free (which is awesome), and teachers can create their own accounts to create and share lists with their students. You can create as many lists as you want, and students can find them easily without having to have a login. They simple have to type in the first or last name of the teacher or the name of the list, making it simple for them to find lists. Once they’ve found a list they can take a test, have the list “taught” to them with a review, play the game, or print off the list to work with it in the real world.

3. Lists of the Month – If you’re a competitive type, or just want some recognition for your wickedly difficult spelling lists, you can nominate your list(s) for “List of the Month.” When I checked the most recent lists, I found vocabulary words from the first chapter of “Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, soccer terms, and 3rd grade homophones.

Apparently, there’s more in store for the website, with more games coming online in the near future. With just the one game, I can see how students might quickly become complacent with the repetitive recordings; clicking on the sentence or pronunciation button yields the same recording each time. This is definitely a site worth checking out for elementary and middle school students.

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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This web site has been around for awhile but I thought you guys might have seen it – obviously you haven’t so here is the info from Karl Fisch

Inthe spirit of my last post, here’s a chance to have your students work on their vocabulary (English) and fight world hunger at the same time. Free Rice is a website that has a fairly simple premise:Click on the answer that best defines the word.
If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word.
For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In between are thousands of words for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people… everyone!

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you
at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.

Have a go and leave a comment telling which level you reach!

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