This SpellBoard app also includes:
- Activity
- Assessment
- Join to access all included materials
How do you spell great? G-R-E-A-T! Ensure that your pupils can spell great and so much more with this effective app.
Concepts
Additional Tags
App Overview
Create a Quiz:
- Tap the plus sign in the top-right corner of the quiz box
- Title your quiz
- Select a grade level
- Either choose words from your already-loaded words or add new words
- If you add a word, you must:
- Type in the correct spelling
- Record yourself saying the word out loud
- Decide if the spelling should be case sensitive
- Select a language
- If you add a word you can also:
- Compose a phrase or sentence using the word
- Add a recording of yourself saying this phrase out loud
- Choose a photo
- Enter synonyms and antonyms
- Press OK and Save to add your new quiz to the list of quizzes; the app will make sure you don't want to add more words before closing the window
- You can edit your quiz by selecting it and pressing the Edit button under the gear in the box to the right of the list of quizzes
Spelling Practice:
- Select a student for practice and press Save; add any number of pupils to the program with the plus sign in the top-right corner of the Students window
- Choose a quiz
- Tap Activities
- Choose what you would like to do:
- Study the words
- Take the quiz
- Put the words into alphabetical order
- Drag letters into spaces to complete each word
- Unscramble letters to spell each word
- Find the words in a word search
- View results of each activity on the top of the screen just after each activity, in the history under the words, and under each student's profile when you press the information icon
Other Features:
- Share quizzes with your class or fellow teachers
- Load quizzes (made by you or others) onto your device from various applications
- Connect to another SpellBoard with Bluetooth
- Back up your data to an iTunes document folder
- Manage and add words individually
- Remove words that are not used
- Search for words in the app
- Merge two or more quizzes
- Modify settings for each individual activity; some options include repeating the words out loud, having the app speak each letter of the words, allowing hints, and showing pictures
- View in landscape or portrait
Instructional Ideas
- If you have access to a set of tablets, or if each of your pupils has a device, share the lists with your class for practice and mastery
- Use this as targeted help for struggling spellers and set up a practice station; learners can create their own profiles, and you can track their progress easily
- Suggest SpellBoard to the parents or guardians of struggling spellers
- Have the members of your department switch off creating a weekly vocab list and sharing the quiz
- Create lists for your world language class
Classroom Considerations
It's very easy to delete a quiz. Just swipe to the left, press Delete, and it's gone forever. Class members should be aware of this before working on their own. Avoid extra work by backing up your lists.
The app would be stronger if the definition function worked. That way, you could incorporate vocabulary more smoothly into the app. Since you can create a custom sentence to go along with each word, this creates an opportunity for teaching vocabulary in any language.
Check out the SpellBoard Buddy, created by the same developer for the practice portion of the app. You cannot create lists on SpellBoard Buddy, but, since it is only $0.99 and there is no chance of kids accidentally deleting the master quiz list, it would be a great option for students. Also available is SpellBoard for Mac.
Pros
- Easy to add, remove, and edit word entries
- Provides several different ways to practice spelling
- Can add multiple student profiles
- Progress tracking is built in for each profile
- Cute interface with many functions
Cons
- While there is a button in study mode that reads Definition, which is meant to send to you a dictionary, it doesn't function
- Deleting lists and connecting to share options is very easy
- Freezes occasionally; you may need to delete a re-add a list