Learn the basics of spelling in 2 minutes

This video is a little bit fast for my liking ( remember to pause after each rule.) but it just might click with a couple of your students who have been making some common spelling mistakes.

60 second quickwrites for students made easy with oneword.com

What is it?  Oneword is an extremely simple yet useful tool that every teacher should have in their favourites and interactive white boards.  Essentially it offers you a single word writing prompt and then a sixty second timer winds down on screen to allow you write anything wou want about that word depending on what your writing focus is for the lesson.

It is a great solution to writers blocks and really puts you under the pump to get something written in 60 seconds.

What is even better is that it saves what others have written about that word and you can share those with your students also.

How can I use this in my classroom?

I would recommend you get all of your students to do 3 60 second quickwrites on oneword and then get them to work that word and the elements they worte about it in a narrative.  They will have heaps to elaborate on once they have done the quickwrite.

Secondly you might almost do a 'Poetry Slam' style activity in which students have 60 seconds to write a very brief poem or 'freestyle' piece around that word.

Access oneword here.



Spellcheck anywhere, anytime

Occasionally you need to check spelling in an application that does not include a spelling checker and you don't want to launch your word processor just for that. This is when tinySpell becomes handy. It is a small utility that allows you to easily and quickly check and correct the spelling in any Windows application.
tinySpell can watch your typing on the fly and alert you whenever it detects a misspelled word.
It can also check the spelling of text that you copy to the clipboard.
tinySpell installs itself in the system tray for easy access. It is free and you can get hold of it here.