Spelling 100 words a night for mom and dad is no way to train for a spelling bee. Instead turn to the digital age to get your spell on.
Seventh graders from Gethsemane Lutheran School in Tempe, Arizona tested a few spelling apps out for "The List."
- Speaking Spelling Bee -- Not only can you create your own spelling lists, which is good for students to learn assigned spelling words, but you can test your mad spelling skills with your friends with over 5,000 words to spell. It also gives you a list of high-scoring words for other games like Scrabble and it's free for the iPhone. The kids say this one was fun and easy, but they didn't like that it is very time consuming.
- Miss Spell's Class -- This free iPhone app has you look at a list of words and click if each is misspelled or not. The kids say this one was not so much fun because it was extremely difficult. But when we asked if it would improve their spelling skills, they gave us a reluctant yes.
- Times Spelling Bee -- This isn't an app but a free website. It offers several different spelling games right on your laptop. You can play a typical spelling bee game or a missing letter game where you determine the word by seeing it used in sentence. The students didn't get a chance to try this one out, but we thought you might like to try it.