comment on this - 12 Jan 2012

Spellzone are happy to at BETT once again!

 BETT is dedicated to showcasing the best in UK and international educational technology products, resources and best practice, BETT has enabled thousands of practitioners to enhance their knowledge of learning through technology.

http://bettshow.com

BETT 2012 takes place on 11-14 January 2012, at Olympia in London.

Come along to see us at SN26 for a free 3 month trial for your school or organisation!

comment on this - 03 Dec 2011

Free trial of Spellzone for schools and colleges

Would you like to trial Spellzone in your school or College?

We can offer a 3 month free trial of Spellzone. This includes everything within the website and normally included in a site subscription. There is no obligation to buy Spellzone after the free period.

If you would like to trial Spellzone just email us, either from your school/college email or with details of your school or college. We will then email you back with a code which will enable you to setup Spellzone for your whole school. Should you then wish to subscribe after the free period all you need to do is either pay online or by invoice and you can continue using the same account.

comment on this - 10 Nov 2011

Sentences for word lists

You may have recently noticed that our word lists now sometimes have sentences appearing on them.

We have started the process of adding sentences to all word lists associated with the Spellzone course. This will provide a database of around 5000 sentences.

These sentences are available on the word list pages and will be used in the sound test and  Against the clock  game. We believe the addition of sentences will help users with vocabulary and will add a feature that has previously been requested.

We expect it will take a few months to add 5000 sentences. In early 2012 we then plan to add a new facility which will allow you to add your own sentences.

1 comment - 20 Aug 2011

A whole-school spelling policy - suggestions

In most schools the teaching of spelling skills is regarded as the responsibility of the English Department but virtually all teachers have some written work to mark.  Despite the increase in computer-based work, where spellcheckers are available, many assignments and most exams are still handwritten. Recently many exam boards have said they are tightening their standards and penalizing poor spelling.

Therefore the teaching of spelling is still important. By developing and following a consistent approach across the whole school, teachers can not only contribute to their students’ spelling improvement but also ease their own marking load by reducing the number of mistakes made.

The following suggestions could be considered:

• Encourage all students to keep a personal spelling log: a small notebook - or blank pages in a student planner - in which they record any words they need to learn. They should keep this notebook with them at all times and to use it for any problem spellings, in all subjects, not just English.
• Remind students frequently that the majority of the spellings they need are often likely to be found in whatever text-book, worksheet etc. is in use.  Careful reference to source material will avoid the initial error which can lead to the wrong image of a word becoming fixed in the student’s visual memory.
• Consider the value of producing word-processed ‘Spelling Banks’ i.e. lists of words specific to any subject and any topic - a task which could be shared amongst members of each subject department.  Five or ten minutes spent looking at a “Word Bank” at the start of a new topic will not only help with spelling but will provide an opportunity to familiarise less able students with any new  reading vocabulary for that topic.  Students could retain the lists for the period of that topic and be encouraged to refer to them whenever necessary.  Again, by avoiding the mistakes in the first place, the students are more likely to remember the correct spellings.
• Decide on a consistent approach to identifying errors, for example, underline the mistake and put ‘sp’ in the margin.  (It can be helpful to students if the part of the word which is wrong is the part underlined.) 
• Make sure the students know what is required of them in terms of ‘spelling corrections’.  Many students get confused because different teachers - perhaps even within the same subject - have different requirements.  A suggested approach:
  
  
  • If students have had access to the words (e.g. in the text-book or in a ‘Spelling Bank’ provided) they should be advised to find the words and correct them themselves.
  • For other words it would be helpful if teachers, (time permitting!) were to write the correct spellings for the students and then remind them that these words need practice.   This would be particularly helpful if the error is not in the start of the word - when the advice ‘Look it up in a dictionary’ would be of little use.
  • Learning spellings can be done by the traditional methods such as ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’.  The spelling program ‘Spellzone’ (www.spellzone.com ) has an interactive version of this. Students can upload their own personal word lists and use them with a variety of games to aid learning.  As Spellzone is an online program, this practice can be done at home.
  • The least able spellers, who make many mistakes in each piece of work, are unlikely to benefit from correcting all of them; their memory would be overloaded and they would probably remember nothing.  In these cases it is better to target a few - say 3 - of the most common words and make sure these are learned thoroughly.
• Remember, dictionaries are only useful when a student knows the correct letters at the start of a word. If your school allows the use of electronic devices in class, some students find computer-based spell-checkers useful.  These are best used before the event, to ensure that the correct word is written, rather than being used later for corrections. They should still add such words to their personal spelling log for later practice.
• Rather than interrupt the flow of a piece of writing to check on an unfamiliar word, some students with spelling difficulties benefit from keeping a pencil to hand and quickly switching to that for any words they are unsure of.  They can then go back later and look up all those words at the same time. In general, though, it is advisable to avoid the errors in the first place, so that only the correct version of the word is used.
• Many students need frequent reminders to re-read their work to check it. We all know how difficult it is to proof-read our own writing, yet somehow we expect our students to do it.  They need to be given tips on effective proof-reading e.g. check again after a time gap;  when checking specifically for spelling, look at one line at a time, working from the bottom up; look for words which don’t ‘look’ right.

Some of the above ideas could be put forward for discussion at a staff development day.  As a practical follow-up to the theoretical introduction, teachers could work in their own departments to start compiling the “Spelling Banks” referred to above.

A staff development session on spelling could include some input from your Learning Support department on marking the written work of the least able pupils. This could also be an opportunity to alert staff to the possibility of undiagnosed specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia.  About one person in ten has this problem to some degree and one in 25 is affected seriously enough to need extra help. At secondary level the most significant indicator of dyslexia is usually poor spelling. In contrast, dyslexics often have good ability in subjects requiring spatial skills e.g. the sciences and Design/Technology.  If teachers notice students whose written work is unexpectedly poor in comparison with their oral or practical performance, they are advised to alert the Special Educational Needs Coordinator.

How Spellzone fits into a Whole School Spelling Policy

Spellzone is an online spelling course specially written for older students: teenage to adult. It provides a complete course, teaching all the spelling rules with interactive practice at each stage.  All teaching points are clearly explained and follow a logical framework.

The full course will be useful for those who have noticeable spelling problems but Spellzone is also useful as a ‘dip-in’ resource for any student who has unfamiliar words to learn.  Students can upload their own personal word lists and use them with all the Spellzone games.  Spellzone is an online course that can be used outside school, so spelling practice can be set as a homework assignment.

Teachers of all subjects can upload word lists on any specific topic. This can be an ideal tool for the creation of the “Spelling Banks”.  There is a dictionary with sound and a translation feature, making it accessible to students whose first language is not English.

For further information, please see the free spelling course units

comment on this - 14 Jul 2011

Spelling mistakes 'cost millions' in lost online sales

This article by Sean Coughlan, the BBC News education correspondent, illustrates why companies and organisations should seriously think about including a spelling course for their employees as part of their personal and professional development.

Those seeking work should also consider this. A recent survey by the CBI found that 42% of employers are ‘not satisfied’ with the basic reading and writing skills of school leavers; apparently, almost half have actually had to invest in some kind of ‘remedial training’ to improve their skills.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

See also: http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1080229/y-gud-spelin-cn-mek-tha-diffrnc/

Barry

comment on this - 12 Jul 2011

Nonce upon a time…

Nonce words are words invented for a particular occasion usually made by blending of two existing words; often blending two concepts or objects in response to a specific context.

Family slang can be littered with these. Here are few of my daughter’s, invented during early language development which have become common usage in our house:

Birdknocker (woodpecker)

Bounceline (trampoline)

Quackling, (a baby duck - quack and duckling)

Floudery (flour and powdery)

Examples found in books by Roald Dahl

Snozzcumber

grumptious

Examples used by Ken Dodd, a British entertainer

titilifarious (titilating and hilarious)

plumtuous (plump and sumptuous)    

Some have even made it into the Oxford Dictionary, recognised as compound words.

imagineering

fantabulous

Julie MacDermott, UK

comment on this - 02 Jul 2011

25 Norse words used in Yorkshire English

Being born and raised in York, England and looking forward to my holiday visiting friends in Sweden, I started to think about the words that connect our cultures. Many of these words are still used in Yorkshire and are of Old Norse origin. Here are a few examples:

Barn (pronounced Bairn) - a young child
Beck - a stream
Berserk - going mad
Brigg - a bridge
Cleg - a horse fly
Crake - a crow (my parents live in a village called Crayke)
Dale - a valley
Fell  - a hill or mountain
Flags - paving stones
Flit - to move house (“Are you flitting?”)
Foss - waterfalls or rapids - (there is a River Foss in York)
Gat - got
Gate - Street - Micklegate is a street in York
Gawp - look
Hey up (sey upp) - look out, be careful (now used as a greeting "Hey up lad")
Laik - play (“Are you laking out today?”)
Lug - to pull or carry (“Lug it over here”)
Middin - an outside toilet
Mucky - dirty/messy
Ram - smelly
Rive - to tear or pull
Reckon - to think/consider
Skutil - scuttle - a bucket for carrying coal
Siling - raining heavily
Yest - yeast

Unit 35 of Spellzone (Why is English spelling so hard?) explores how English spelling has developed over the years and the influence of old languages on English spelling.

It would be very interesting to hear of more examples of these cultural connections.

Barry

2 comments - 18 Dec 2010

11 Tips for learning spelling

1. First - don´t despair! Some of the world´s cleverest people have struggled with English spelling - you are not alone! Try out these ideas and you should soon see an improvement.

2. When you are practising spellings, use as many senses as you can:

• LOOK closely at a word, try to remember what it LOOKS like
• Think about the SOUND of a word - that will often give you clues about the spelling
• To learn a word, WRITE it or TYPE it - or both

In this way, you are using three senses to learn a word: sight, hearing and movement - the method most experts agree is best.

If you only use a keyboard, use that for your practice. You will be training your fingers to use the correct movements to spell that word or sound. However, despite the growing use of computers, most of us have to write by hand at some time - and this can be a very useful aid to learning in itself. Think about writing your name:

Your pen ´knows where to go´ - it is automatic.

When you write several words with the same letter pattern, you are training your hand to work automatically - soon you will not need to think about those words.

Never use capitals when writing to learn words - the word will have no shape, which will not help your visual memory. If possible use cursive script (joined writing) - the ´flow´ of the writing helps the process become automatic.

3. We are all different and we all make different spelling mistakes. To make your learning personal to you, start a ´Spelling Log´ - your own personal dictionary.

Look carefully at the words you find hard and work out a way of remembering them (see the many tips on the next page). Write the words in your Spelling Log and keep the book with you at all times. Make use of odd moments to get some practice - you don´t even need a pencil - just looking at the words will help and you can also trace the letters with a finger on any surface - even your leg.

Make lists of words you find hard and learn them.

4. Dictionaries can be a help - sometimes - if you know how to spell the start of a word! If you need a lot of help with spelling, you might consider getting a specialist dictionary.

5. Playing word games with sympathetic friends will help your spelling. There are many games that involve making words from a random selection of letters, for example:  Scrabble, Boggle, Word Spin.

6. Read a lot - not just books but everything around you e.g. food packets, newspapers, catalogues, billboards, road signs etc.

This will fix the look of many common spelling patterns in your memory - which will help you to spot if one of your spellings doesn´t ´look right´.
    
7. Keep a scrap of paper to hand, to try out different spellings for a word - often you will be able to tell which one ´just looks right´ e.g. toylet/toilet    tois/toys

8. Often the words you need may be close at hand - perhaps in your college worksheet or textbook, or in the letter you are answering.

9. If you can´t recall the look of a word, use the sounds - then, even if the spelling is not exactly right, the reader will know what you mean. (This course will teach you which letter patterns are the most common for English sounds.)

10. Don´t be scared to ask people - most will only be too pleased to help you. (You could make a remark like: ´I´m just like Einstein - a lousy speller!´)

11. Get a friend to check through anything important for you.

2 comments - 18 Dec 2010

Help Spellzone and make life easier for yourself

We are continually updating Spellzone, adding new features and responding to your suggestions. Something that has been requested is the ability to be able to login to Spellzone directly from your own website, for example your schools homepage. Now this is possible.

If you click here you will find a range of tools you can use. These include login panels of varying sizes and design to put on your website, a dictionary panel so that you can have a dictionary handy on your own website and a range of image panels you can use.

Please make use of these resources. We hope they are useful to you as well as being useful to us by providing quicker access to Spellzone for our valued users and helping new users to find Spellzone.

Tarot

comment on this - 06 Dec 2010

American spellings or British spellings - are they now interchangeable?

We’d like to ask teachers their views about whether American spelling is now acceptable in the UK and other countries that have traditionally used British spellings.  I’ve read somewhere that people in the USA are pretty tolerant of British spelling but I’m not sure if the reverse is yet true this side of the Atlantic.

Throughout the Spellzone site we have made sure that we cater for both British and American spelling.   Where there is a difference we give both versions of the word and, if there are many examples, such as word endings colour/color, theatre/ theater (Unit 25), there are separate versions of the word lists and test activities.   Flags alert the user to which is which.

But what should we do if a British Spellzone user types an American spelling in an answer to a test?  Or vice versa?  Do we mark it as wrong? Would it be marked as wrong in your school or college? I know in my schooldays in England it would certainly be regarded as wrong to use American spelling but the world has moved on since then. Today’s students are frequently exposed to American spelling on the Internet, so can they really be blamed for using it in their own writing?

Michael Gove, the UK government’s Education Secretary, has recently announced a policy of ‘back to traditional teaching’, with marks to be deducted in exams for poor spelling.  Do any UK English teachers know what the policy will be if a student uses an American spelling? Will he or she be penalised?

At Spellzone our aim is to help as many learners as possible improve their spelling so we’ll continue to cater for both camps - but we would love to hear your views on the topic.  

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