2015 Spellzone Blog Round Up
Can you believe 2015 is almost over? This year we attended our first awards ceremony, launched a Starter Course, curated a collection of curriculum-based word lists, began offering free online demos, and, of course, shared a variety of tips, tricks, and interesting facts over on the blog.
Here are some of our favourite blog posts from over the year:
- This year we continued looking at pairs and groups of words which are easy to mix up, and we shared tips and tricks to help you remember when to use which word. We looked at: lie vs. lay, a vs. an, stationary vs. stationery, prescribe vs. proscribe, quiet vs. quite, ensure vs. insure, may vs. might, can vs. may, and borrow vs.lend. We also looked at three sets of confusing contractions (it’s vs. its, they’re vs. their vs. there, and you’re vs. your). Click here for a quick reference guide to some of the confusing words we’ve featured.
- To help our users who are learning English, we also continued looking at the definitions of popular idioms in the English language. This year we looked at idioms about new beginnings, the heart, nature, music, the five senses, school, and the house and home.
- We shared a list of our favourite tips and tricks posts, and we also looked at how to use a semi colon, ‘words’ to avoid, tips for creating mnemonics, tips for learning spelling, and exam tips. We also shared ideas for how to incorporate Spellzone into your revision routine.
- We celebrated Burn’s Night, Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, National Shakespeare Day, Dyslexia Awareness Week, Halloween, Bonfire Night, and, of course, Christmas.
- After they became our 500th follower on Twitter, we offered Hutton Grammar School a free one-year subscription to Spellzone. Here is what Mrs C Gore, Assistant Subject Leader for English and Literacy Coordinator, said after winning: "We are absolutely delighted to have been gifted this subscription. This is a wonderful chance for students of all abilities to gain some extra support with the spelling - something that is now ever more important throughout both Key Stage 3 and GCSE levels. We are looking forward to giving our students the opportunity to use Spellzone both in school and at home and we know that parents will be impressed with the resource just as much as we are. Thank you Spellzone!"
- While exploring interesting aspects of the English language, we looked at where we get our words for types of coffee from, the origins of our words for colours, and words that come from Greek mythology (part one and part two).
- Finally, as part of our Word for Wednesday feature, we looked at a range of weird and wonderful words, including: abditory, eclipse, emoji, hazard, hippopotamus, lexicon, librocubicularist, pareidolia, petrichor, pterodactyl, and widdershins.
What have you enjoyed most on our blog this year, and what would you like to see more of next year? Which articles have you found the most useful? Do let us know so that we can make 2016’s articles the best we can. You can contact us via Facebook, Twitter and email, or by leaving a comment below.
We hope 2015 has been a great year for you, and see you all in 2016. Why not start making some spelling-related resolutions now?
Happy New Year!
29 Dec 2015
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