Do You remember the days when spelling meant dreary memorization of lists of words and boring workbook exercises? Are those days still alive and well in your classroom? Do you wish you could cast a magic “spell” that would help turn every student into a stellar speller? Technology to the rescue! I have found some excellent sites that you can customize and share with your students to help enhance their spelling (and reading) skills.

My favorite spelling support site to date is SpellingCity.com, a site that could be used with students all ages. Sign up for an account as a teacher or parent so that you can input spelling word lists for kid-friendly practice, game-playing, and testing activities. Registration is easy and quick, but does require email verification. If you register as a teacher you will have an added option of printing spelling practice worksheets for students (you can select the following print options: Print, D’Nealian, Cursive, or Sign lanuage). Once you have verified your account you will see a URL address that you can use to direct students to word lists and you will have full access to a toolbox feature (at the top of the page) that will give you rights to develop word lists. You can input 5, 10, or 15 words using the input boxes or bypass the input boxes and batch your list of words (I preferred the batch option and discovered that you could create a longer list of words). I intentionally misspelled a word in my list to see what would happen. The program accepted my misspelled word, so you will want to check your spelling carefully as you develop your lists of words.

Once you have developed a list of words your students will be able to access your word bank using the link provided during registration (it also appears on your homepage when you login). Use this link to access my sample lists of words. Students do not need to login to access and work with the word banks you have developed. Once students select a list of words they have several options: View, Test Me, Teach Me, Play a Game, or Print. The Test Me option is really neat from the standpoint that students click on a button to hear the word read to them and also have the option of hearing the word in a sentence. There are a series of ten games students can play to further expose them to the words using different activities that include matching, alphabetizing, HangMouse, word search, unscramble, word match, Which Word, and more. When students test themselves they should wear headphones (or you will go crazy) as the spelling words are read to them over the computer. After the test is complete students can check their answers, type their name in an input box, and print the test to turn in for a grade. They can also print a certificate that indicates their name, the word list title, and their grade.

Please don’t feel overwhelmed by my lengthy description of SpellingCity.com. If you are comfortable using a computer you will find this program very intuitive and so will your students!

It was hard to find any program that came close to the caliber of the SpellingCity.com site, but I did find a couple of simple programs that would be appropriate for young students. The Look, Cover, Write, and Check site allows students to work from established word banks, or they can type in their own word list. Two other game sites that require student input are Scholastic’s ABC Spelling Wizard and Word Safari.

Keep in mind, some of the sites I have recommended in previous posts also lend themselves to spelling practice: