SpellingCity Review (used with Words Their Way)

Linking up with the amazing and fabulous Holly for Tried it Tuesday! I LOVE Tuesday just because of this linky :)

So, I have been using SpellingCity.com for part of our Word Work and for spelling tests.

This has been going on for a while now and I love it more and more every week! I use the free account. First of all, I differentiate my spelling groups using Words Their Way. This is the BEST for differentiating spelling. I have used it for 8 years now and still love it. In the past 8 years I have never had a parent complaint about spelling. Now just because I said that I will probably have one this week. Ha!

Anyway, here is how we use Spelling City in our classroom...

On our class blog there is a link:

Which takes my students directly to my teacher page on Spelling City. On my teacher page are the lists for each group:

The groups are posted on the wall and the students know which group they are in. After they click on their group, their list is brought up. At the top of the list they can only do the free activities, but there are plenty!

Here are the free activities:

My students use them all! I also print out the Handwriting pages for each group and make them do that for Word Work as well. The handwriting of my students is atrocious this year!

Now, you all need to go link up with Holly!

Winter Word Work Dice!

So my 6th graders were in need of a little bit of motivational change with Word Work. A simple change of activity, sort of, did the trick. I created these dice which have the majority of activities we already did for Word Work and my kiddos LOVED it!

But then I realized the cuteness was lacking. Way lacking and I like cute things. There, I admitted it, I like cute things.

Anyway, I put the Winter Word Work Dice (two different ones in the pack) in my TpT store. Seriously wish I could just give them to you, but I can't. Sorry. They are way cheap though, so check them out.

Hmmm... Comment and follow my blog either today or tomorrow (Saturday and Sunday) and I would LOVE to give these to you for free.

Enjoy your night!

Freebie, freebie!

So, my district uses My Access. This is an online writing program and it is pretty dang awesome. It takes the students through all the steps of the writing process as well as helps them check the 6 traits. Well, my 107 students wrote a narrative and finished it up on Friday. I was checking the reports and looking at the errors report I found my students had over 1,000 capitalization errors. 1,000!!!!!!!!

Holy freakin' cow!

Now, remember, I teach 6th grade and capitalization has been taught to these kids. I even did a unit on capitalization at the beginning of the year. I am totally convinced this is a result of laziness. After my 4th and 5th hour class submitted their final papers I checked the same reports and there were a lot of capitalization errors. So I warned my 6th and 7th hour classes and they had even more errors!! I even warned them!

Now, there were other errors that all fall under editing. I OBVIOUSLY need to back up and see what is going on here.

So, here are my thoughts...

-Review basic capitalization, spelling and word usage

-Identify what is going on/missing

-Keep reviewing these concepts and identifying mistakes

If you have any other ideas, please let me know.

FREEBIE!!

I created 4 Christmas Editing Cards that each have 8 Christmas related sentences on them. On Monday I am going to have my students edit these sentences and rewrite each one. Hopefully I can begin to figure out what is going on. 

If you are one of the first 3 people to comment, I will send this Editing Christmas Sentences pack to you for free! Remember to include your email.