Those of us that use word study activities in conjunction with spelling units, appreciate the effectiveness of this approach in helping students see and find patterns in their words. As I teach spelling units, I've enjoyed the games and activities that are suggested through the Spell It Write program, yet I've been challenged to integrate technology into the spelling program itself. Below are some of the technology tools that I've used to help enhance my spelling program.
The most VALUABLE resource I've used is Spellingcity.com. Each time I teach a spelling unit (I do one every OTHER week in sixth grade) I upload the list of 24 words onto spellingcity.com. This resource allows the students access to their lists at home and provides them with games, audio spelling quiz, handwriting worksheets and other review activities to use with their personalized spelling list.
A second tool that I've implemented to help with spelling word study is this customizable word template. After the students have finished their word sorts, I use this template on the Smartboard and allow students to come to the board and slide the word slips on the board to share with the class how they sorted their words. I also toggle between the template and a random name generator called fruitmachine to select the students that will come to the front and share! You can find this at www.classtools.net
One final resource that I've found helpful for Spelling, is this link that provides customizable powerpoint templates. Spelling review games featuring suffixes, prefixes, root words, etc. can be created using these templates. http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/gameboard.htm
The Teacherscorner.net is also a valuable resource for creating customized worksheets. I use it to create a spelling scramble (or other puzzle board) based on the weekly spelling words.
