World Spelling Day
What it is: World Spelling Day is brought to you by the same folks who hold World Math Day. This year (2011) World Spelling Day is taking place on March 3. Don’t wait, sign your kids up now and they can start practicing! World Spelling Day is a world-wide competition between students where they engage in live games of spelling. Each game lasts for 60 seconds and students can play up to 100 games to earn points for their personal tally. Students can play more than 100 games during the event but only 100 count toward the Spellometer. Students who answer the most correct question will appear in the World Spelling Day Hall of Fame. World Spelling Day has 5 levels to play and 20 games at each level. Just like World Math Day school age students (4-18 years old), individual children, and homeschoolers can register and participate. Register as many or as few students as you want (for free!). Even better, if you already registered for World Math Day, your login credentials will work on the World Spelling Day website!
How to integrate World Spelling Day into the classroom: It couldn’t be easier to get your students involved, just sign them up by registering, pass out usernames and passwords and away you go. Students can play in a computer lab setting (they like to try to login at exactly the same time so they can play against each other in games) or on classroom computers in 60 second rotations. The 60 second time limit on games makes it easy to pass all of your students through a World Spelling Day center on classroom computers. In addition, students can take their login information home with them to play at home. World Spelling Day takes place every March, now that you know it is coming, plan to make it an Olympic type event in your classroom. I have been known to hold opening ceremonies in my classroom prior to the event.
Since your students are competing against students from around the world, why not use the competition to practice using a map and identifying countries? Since I had a Promethean board, I did this digitally with a Google Map. Each time a student competed against a country, they would come up to the board and put a “pin” in the map. Don’t have an interactive whiteboard? The paper map and actual pins are just as fun!
Tips: There is a free World Spelling Day app for the iPad, you can get it here.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using World Spelling Day in your classroom!