Even as we rolled out SpellingCity, teachers and literacy coaches asked us to provide the same flexible practice tools to focus not just on spelling but on recognizing and working with sounds. They asked for help not just with the
Succeed in School with Spooktacular Halloween Activities
Halloween isn’t only about candy, costumes, and cauldrons. Scare up some learning this spooky season with these Halloween activities! Literacy Fright Night – Host a Halloween-themed literacy night at your school and invite students’ families. Each teacher can showcase students’
Google Classroom Convenience
A huge problem for teachers in 21st Century classrooms is the mechanics of rostering all the digital programs that students will use. Just getting students’ names into the system is a hassle. Even after setting up a class list, teachers
Providing Successful PD to your Teachers
Note that this post highlights one of VocabularySpellingCity’s sisters: Science4Us. It is an early elementary science program. Increasingly, principals and superintendents are asking us to help develop their teachers. We have always provided professional development to support our products but
Improving Reading Comprehension through Vocabulary Retention
Vocabulary is responsible for 70% of reading comprehension problems in elementary schools. And while the research is clear on what most students require to build vocabulary (12 spaced multimodal encounters with a word), many schools ignore the research and reading scores suffer.
Our Journey to VocabularySpellingCity
SpellingCity’s Journey to VocabularySpellingCity At VocabularySpellingCity, we went through a transition, moving from being a spelling program to one focused on vocabulary building and reading comprehension. Here’s our story from the beginning. I had a few goals in 2010 when I was starting SpellingCity, as I
Building Phonological, Phonics, and Early Reader Skills
January 2018 Update: Five new reading foundation skills games just launched in addition to Sound It Out: Sort It Out Vowels Which Letter Team? Sound Counter Word Counter Vocabulary Memory Match These phonics games are all based on VocabularySpellingCity’s revolutionary
Elementary Students: Owning the Learning
One of the brightest trends that I see in education today is a broad nationwide move to have students own their learning and to adopt a growth mindset. I’m particularly encouraged to see that this is a distinct trend in elementary schools. In
Insights from Literacy Expert Tim Rasinski on Vocabulary and Comprehension
VocabularySpellingCity sponsored a webinar Dec. 1 with one of my favorite literacy heroes, Dr. Timothy Rasinski. His message on the importance of automaticity in word learning, and its connection to comprehension, is one that all educators can learn from. And
Cursive Instruction is Disappearing. Is There a Compelling Case to Save It?
This is a tough one to answer. While an overwhelming amount of evidence shows the benefits of writing by hand, few studies differentiate between print and cursive, and even fewer come to definite conclusions about which should be taught. But we