“My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.” A. A. Milne
How many times in a day do I hear “How do you spell…” They know better than to ask. They know I do not spell for them. I guess hope springs eternal and they think if they ask often enough, I will cave. We use inventive spelling strategies in the classroom along with environmental print and word walls. There is no shortage of words in our room.
On the iPads, we like to use a few apps to work on spelling. The favorite of my students is Montessori Crosswords. This app is a little pricey at $2.99 but it is very good. Students build words in crossword puzzle form using sounds and picture clues. We also use Word Wizard. There are 189 word lists to choose from and 1000 frequently used words. Students use a talking, moving alphabet that enables them to create words and read. This app is also $2.99. For individualization, I use the Spelling 1-2 app. This app is very pricey at $9.99. It has skyrocketed in price. I bought it for much less last year. The best feature of this app is the ability to create individualized spelling lists for students. The newest app we have is FREE. It is called NG Word Builder. It is created by National Geographic. Word Builder is an interactive resource that lets students build words and sentences using letters, blends and digraphs, vowel patterns, endings and affixes, word families, and high frequency words. It is perfect for reinforcing phonics and spelling. Did I mention it is free??
In addition to using these apps, we do word work daily in the classroom. We use the iPads to write the room, make lists, work on word families and even take spelling tests.
I recently read “I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More” by Karen Beaumont. If you haven’t read it, it’s hysterical. The illustrations alone make me laugh. In the story, the young man gets in trouble for painting all over the house and making a terrible mess. After the story, we talked about things the students have done that have gotten them in trouble. We went to the iPads and illustrated. Some wrote directly on the illustration, others imported it into the Pages app and typed their story. Boy, talk about true confession time! Here is my favorite. It is a good way to end a Friday blog post.
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iTeach with iPads 
Glad I found your blog. I’ve been using My Spell Test to create custom spelling lists. It is pretty basic and designed for iPhone/iPod touch but works well on my iPad and is a lot cheaper than $9.99 – in Australia I think we pay $2.99 and it is worth every cent. I have a review on my blog if you want to check it out. I also love the Montessori Crosswords but haven’t put up a review yet. Must remedy that one. Thanks again.