The six levels in the Tell & Spell online word games are designed to foster enthusiasm for learning new words and improving overall spelling ability. Our process has four steps, where information about words is given, and students must guess the word and spell it correctly.
Step 1 - This step tells the student about the type of word.
In Level 1, students are informed that the word is a ‘person, place, animal or thing’; or a ‘word that describes’; or an ‘action word’.
From Levels 2 to 6 words are introduced as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
This information will assist students in building awareness about the different parts of speech and will assist in using words in their proper context.
Step 2 - This step tells the student the meaning of the word.
Students are provided with the definition of the word. Vocabulary is challenged and improved.
Step 3 - This step tells the student how many letters are in the word and the first letter of the word.
Providing students with the number of letters in the word and the first letter of the word, helps to narrow down the search. Words will be examined and re-examined.
Step 4 - Students must now guess the word and spell it correctly.
Students must address all of the steps listed above in order to select the correct word and spell it correctly.
Important to note:
- Students should be matched to the level that meets their current abilities and the next levels should be used to encourage expansion of their vocabulary over time.
Further Develop Language Skills
Use our ‘Building Word Awareness’ Template (download for free below) on your classroom whiteboard, or print blank copies for your students to fill in. Choose some words from your class level and use them to further strengthen your students’ receptive and expressive language skills.
Top Tips for Using the Template:
- Provide your students with a ‘target word’.
- Encourage them to tell you the meaning of the word. Older children can use a dictionary to look up the word. Encourage them to write the definition in their own words. This will help them remember its meaning.
- Discuss the different parts of speech. Is the word a noun, verb, adjective, adverb? Older children can engage in further discussion about word knowledge. Discuss prefixes, suffixes, plurals, root words etc.
- Discuss if a word can be used as both a noun, adjective and so on. For example, the word ‘sweet’ is both a noun and an adjective.
- Are there any synonyms for the target word? Synonyms are words that have the same or nearly the same meaning e.g. big/huge/enormous/colossal.
- In level 1, there are also opportunities to discuss antonyms (opposite word pairs such as hot/cold, wet/dry etc.)
- Put the target word into a sentence to further strengthen expressive language skills.
Example
