Spelling Monster » spelling

Trial and Error

Tracie Davis — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 11:00:31 +0000

This weeks blog post is mostly about editing and/or deleting a word or word list. First off let me start by saying yes you can delete a word or a word list by simply swiping left to right on the word or wordlist you want to edit or delete. You should then see a delete button appear on the right hand side of the row, tap that and you should get a confirmation that it has been deleted. We chose this approach because in my head I thought it to be an obvious universal since that is how you delete an e-mail on your phone. Boy was I wrong, I guess in hind sight of coarse it made sense in my head but that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination was it as obvious as I thought. There are so many reasons now why I realize how naive I was in this approach. Not that it is not an acceptable way to handle the action but I needed to have added a tutorial letting my users know how to use all features of Spelling Monster. Not just assume that they would just know. This will be something that will be addressed in the not too distant future. I would say the only benefit to this was being able to interact with some our parents out there when they e-mailed to ask how to edit and/or delete. This being the case because not only would they ask how to edit or delete. More times than not they have made suggestions which we try our best to include in our app. One example being a choice between upper and lower case letters. For our parents that go to www.spellingmonster.com I have added this to our FAQ page until we come up with our solution.

Second part of this blog post is… So we got the ever dreaded 1 star rating from one well two of our parents. The issue for me is I wish there was a way I could contact them directly, not to argue why with them but to get more info so we can make our app better. The issues? The couple concerns I read was in our free version. We had a full ad at initial launch. We did research found an ad company that had COPPA compliant ads tested didn’t have any issues on our couple devices and no problems, but a parent noticed that one of the ads loaded was for a non age appropriate game and gave us 1 star, I understand being upset I would be as well. I just wish they contacted us and gave us a chance to rectify the situation. We have since removed the ads completely in our free version. So I hope this parent gives us another chance but I know this is unlikely. Our other issue that needs to be fixed. To one parent it appeared that the free version had no actual games and was just a plug for our paid version. They downloaded our app passed our ad at initial launch. Added there words to choose the first game the text balloon comes up saying that game is a premium game, ok so I have to assume now annoyed mildly that go to the next game and… another premium game. They don’t make it any further, by now their as I would be, annoyed, enough to say forget it and assume that all the games are like that… So as a result we are working on a new way to display our games so it is more obvious as to which games are, um active we will say.

At the end of the day we want Spelling Monster to be the best we can make it. The best way to do that is listen to our user base. So please feel free to contact us directly at info@spellingmonster.com with any questions, comments, suggestions, or concerns. We love to hear from you.

Learning The Ropes.

Tracie Davis — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:00:50 +0000

As I did my usual search trying to find articles to research or stories to write about and coming up short. I decided to write about my experience so far. Though my husband has done a few apps for himself and for others, this is my first time being part of it all. It has been a fun challenge. I have had to learn a lot and fast. It has been scary and beyond frustrating sometimes. When we decided to build Spelling Monster I had small jobs… Filler jobs we will call it. I helped decide on images, reminded him of deadlines, or let him know of information I had found. Simple things really nothing really relying on me alone per say. A couple months in I am bug testing, and learning how to utilize sites/apps like, Asana, Google Drive, and bitbucket. By the time we released I am helping with our website, doing write ups for our blog, Facebook, and twitter page. I am learning the ropes of getting Spelling Monster reviewed on different review sites. It has been a few months since release now we have 600+ followers on Facebook, and 250+ followers on twitter. I don’t have that many followers on my private pages. I do my best to do a blog post a week minimum. Last year at this time I was a stay at home mom and house wife. Well I am still those things but now I am all of these other things too. I love watching Spelling Monster grow.

My Families Spelling Experiences.

Tracie Davis — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 11:00:11 +0000

Spelling…. We all know that it is important. That doesn’t mean we are all great spellers or even ok spellers. I personally have always struggled with spelling. Even in the era of the all knowing spell check I struggle. My parents had me practice daily just like everyone else. Though that still didn’t help my spelling honestly it probably made it worse, because the “practice ” I had to do was write each word 10x each. Which I guess works in theory or maybe as an addition to, or maybe just not for me. I found this task boring, tedious, and (in my child perspective) horrible. In school practice meant writing sentences again so boring. I try as a parent to make learning fun at home, and pay attention to my kids individual learning styles. My younger daughter loves games whether thats a digital game like spelling monster or a traditional game hang man. My older daughter is very creative, rainbow words, cutting out letters and glueing them down, anything hands on is her. In previous posts I have listed many of the different ways we practice. For them to be able to choose from practice exercises that they enjoy makes all the difference. Since they are having fun the amount of time they spent practicing increased. the amount they are retaining has increased, both short and long term, which for me is the point. Learning and practicing doesn’t have to be boring. Kids shouldn’t dread learning, it should be fun.

Lets Talk Word Decoding.

Tracie Davis — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:00:07 +0000

In this weeks blog I would like to talk about word decoding. More than half of the children diagnosed with a reading learning disability have decoding difficulties. So what exactly is decoding?

Decoding is the ability to apply your knowledge of letter sound relationships including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Understanding decoding relationships is what gives children the ability to recognize familiar words and figure out unfamiliar words.

Struggling with word decoding can be extremely frustrating for a child. As a parent it can be difficult to read between the lines and figure out how to help. In doing some research I found a few good sites but I liked one in particular. Reading Rockets site talks about word decoding struggles from both a childs, parents, and teachers perspective. RR also has several ideas on how to help. One example reading rockets has for children is when you’re trying to sound out a word, pay close attention to the print. Try to look at all the letters in the word, not just the first one or two. Parents they have ideas for us to help as well. Here’s one of several.Talk with your child about the “irregular” words that she’ll often see in what she’s reading. These are the words that don’t follow the usual letter-sound rules. These words include said, are, and was. Students must learn to recognize them “at sight.” These are just a couple ideas, the whole article was a great read and site was very informative. Word decoding is important part of spelling and reading. The more we practice anything the better we will become.

Divergent Spelling

Tracie Davis — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:00:44 +0000

Lets talk about divergent spelling also known as sensational spelling. Don’t know what this is?

Well simply put divergent spelling is the deliberate misspelling or non standard alternative to a spelling of a word. Why would you purposely misspell a word?

Well divergent spelling is a popular advertising technique. A lot of companies big and small use this. An example of divergent spelling would be Dunkin’ Donuts, Krispy Kreme, or Froot Loops. The misspelling are used to attract attention or to render a trademark, more suggestive then merely descriptive. You can find these types of misspellings everywhere from branding, pop culture, on the internet, and even in books. Though these types of spellings are imbedded in our culture I wonder how it affects young children. Explaining these “exceptions” can be difficult, but teaching when these exceptions are acceptable can be much more difficult.

When my daughters were small explaining that Krispy Kreme is not the proper spelling of these words individually was interesting. Not really knowing how exactly to explain why it is acceptable to misspell a word in this context is how I came to research divergent spelling. Then I changed my approach now we have fun games finding fun spellings of common words we know.

More Great Spelling Ideas.

Tracie Davis — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 01:36:18 +0000

Had a few requests asking about more spelling ideas. Practicing spelling can be fun with a little creativity. Here are some more fun ways to practice spelling and have fun with your kids at the same time.

1.Finger Paint: Have extra paint around have fun finger painting your letters and/or words. Have fun outside on a sunny day for easy cleanup.

2.Family Fun Night: Play scrabble not only are you spending quality time together everyone young and old can practice their spelling.

3.Alphabet Magnets: We all have a set of these. We got a few packs at the dollar store that way we had multiples of each letter and can spell multiple words and make fun sentences.

4.Old magazines: Have fun cutting out letters and spelling words you can even glue them down.

5.Play Dough: Don’t want to buy play dough you can make it easy. Check out play dough recipes online. Just add a little food coloring and voila. Shape play dough into letters and spell words.

Tried all these options already. Do what I do when I am falling short on ideas, check out online. One of my favorite places http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com. This site has tons of options. Remember to be a great speller takes practice, but nothing says that practice can’t be fun.

More Fun Ways to Spell

Tracie Davis — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 11:00:30 +0000

In a previous blog we have discussed different ways to become a better speller. As a parent I am always looking for different fun ways to practice spelling. It’s important to me to make learning fun. Here a few more fun practice ideas for learning to spell.

1. Have small kids? Foam letters are a great learning tool. Stick the letters on the bathtub wall and have fun spelling. My kids even liked creating and sounding out their own word creations.

2. Use sign language to sign your letters as you spell your words.

3. Connect the Letters. Just like connect the dots but with letters. Ex: Connect S- P- E- L- L. There is another option to this making several dots for each letter itself. Both are very fun.

4.Pyramids. Ex: S

SPE

SPEL

SPELL

These are fun my kids also like to change colors with each level.

5. Pipe Cleaners. Are you are crafty mom? Break those pipe cleaners out and bend them to form letters to spell words.

There are so many fun ways to practice spelling. Over the years I have gotten ideas from teachers, other parents, and the internet. Have more fun ideas to practice? Leave a comment and let us know.

Learning Lost Over Summer Vacation

Tracie Davis — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 11:00:42 +0000

Did you know that children experience educational losses over the summer when they don’t engage in some kind of learning activity? Studies show that summer learning losses can equal a month or more of your childs instruction depending on the subject. Teachers typically spend between 4 to 6 weeks re-teaching material that students have forgotten over the summer. What’s one of the most susceptible skills lost? Spelling skills! Not to mention reading writing and mathematical skills. In addition to these loss of skills studies show that this loss of skills contribute to the growing gap in performance. In order to slow or even prevent learning loss students must have access to appropriate materials and practice activities. A survey of 100 school districts recently found that all districts operated some type of summer program. Although more than 90 percent of summer programs were described as “remedial,” targeting only students who were not on grade level. So what can you as a parent do personally, to help combat summer learning loss with your kids?

* Look into your local library. It’s a wonderful place to promote the love of reading, and the librarian can suggest grade-level appropriate books to read.

* Check out safe, parent-approved Internet sites. There are many that offer a daily craft activity to do alone or with a parent each day, some brain teasers, some fun educational games, etc.

* Download educational apps like “Spelling Monster”.

* Be sure to check with your childs teacher to get suggestions for summer books, workbooks and pleasure books. Or you could check online for age/grade appropriate book lists.

* Look into your local bookstores for a childrens reading hour, wee read, or story hour. One of our local bookstores often hosts reading hours with guest teachers and parents.

*Take your kids on a hike on a nearby nature trail. Walk slowly, and give your kids a chance to explore the trail, looking at whatever catches their eye. When you see them interested in something be sure to stop and examine their finding.

Just remember no matter whether you are walking a trail, finding a book at the library, or playing an interactive game keep your child engaged. The more fun your child is having the more involved he or she will be, and the more they will learn.

Resources :

http://www.rif.org/us/literacy-resources/articles/primer-on-summer-reading-loss.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_learning_loss

http://www.summerlearning.org/?page=know_the_facts

http://www.jbse.webinfo.lt/71-77.Geske.pdf