Hi everyone,
Hope you all enjoyed April Fools Day, the circular that was sent around this morning in relation to pupils repeating the year got a lot of reactions this morning, it certainly made me do a double take for sure.
Today I shared photos of my Spelling Shed on Instagram, my attempt to try and catch some of my pupils out today. Gave me a giggle to start the day anyway. I have had a few questions on Instagram about Spelling Shed so I said I would share the information here.
Spelling Shed is from Ed Shed and consists of a year long Spelling programme for schools. It consists of phonics, spelling rules, prefix and suffix along with challenge words. You can also create your own lists to match with the spelling book in use in your school.
I signed up for Spelling Shed last year and got an individual subscription. I felt that Spelling Shed met the needs of my class and I could differentiate for the various needs in my class. I also followed their Phonics programme, teaching one spelling rule each week. This year I followed a similar approach with my class, I set up groups for differentiation and added their weekly spellings from Spellbound.
There is an online hub that the children log into to play games based on the lists you have assigned. Each child has their own profile and they can earn points which allows them to change their avatar etc.
So, during this phase of distance learning I have set spellings each week. I have downloaded the PDF and powerpoint to link with the stage I am using. I can use the worksheets and challenge activities each day and they can use the online hub to play their own games.
Then each week I set a hive game, I can access the teacher hub to create games and I get a code to share with my class, they can log on and join others for a live game. It calls out a spelling and they have to type it in, or touch the letters on their screen as quickly as possible. You can set the difficulty of the game and that can reduce the letters available for each word, or add the whole alphabet to choose from.
Spelling Shed is one of the most popular apps/sites that my class are accessing during distance learning. We had been using it since September so the class are well familiar with it too. It is easy to sign up and use it on a trial basis, I would recommend starting the trial after Easter. You can add your students, create groups for differentiation and assign spellings easily and you can also monitor their progress through the teacher dashboard.
If you want any further information on Spelling Shed please send me a PM.
Stay Safe Everyone
Aistear Muinteoir
Aistear Múinteoir 