Vocabulary Spelling City

Vocabularyspellingcity is a website where students can work on their personal spelling lists in a variety of manners.  There is a free portion of the website which allows students to input their words and begin playing right away.  A premium version also exists at a cost of $49.99 per year for a class of 25, but as a supplement to classroom spelling activities, the free version will suffice.

Once the words are inputted, students can use those words for a spelling test, to go over the spelling of the word with a computerized instructor or to play a variety of games.  The spelling test feature will say the word to the student and then read the word in a sentence.  The spelling instructor does a similar task, but also spells the word for the student.  The best use of the website though, is the games that students can play.  Once the words are inputted they can play a version of hang mouse, where they must figure out which of their spelling words is hidden and how to spell it before the cat wakes up.  Another popular choice is Audio Word Match, a version of memory that uses the students spelling words and reads them aloud when they flip a card, a great way to connect the list to reading. 

While I have never signed up for the teacher account there is one available that I may try in the future.  It allows teachers to save spelling lists to a personal home page for students to access.  This may alleviate the frustration that some students experience when trying to use the keyboard.