Spell Wizards

Spell Wizard is a subscription-based spelling practice website. Once signed up, parents can create four account profiles per subscription and teachers can add "users," or students. Each child account gets its own login name and password as well as other variables that modify play, like the number of words appearing in each game. When kids log in, they can personalize their profile page with a nickname and an avatar. They'll need to select a difficulty level, which determines the amount of support offered in the game. The easy level shows the word, says it aloud, and then offers the first letter of the word with dashes for missing letters. Medium level reads the word and then gives the dashes to complete the word. The hard level reads the word aloud with no extra help. There's also an option to have sentences accompany each word. Students can hide sentences in the games if they are only working on spelling words they hear.

Teachers have the option of selecting spelling words from a list or creating their own words with sentences. Spell Wizards auto-generates the audio supports for both words and sentences.The company is based out of the United Kingdom, so the spelling lists and grade levels align with their educational system. Basic reports display successful word completions for individual students or classes.

Spell Wizards is getting the basics right, but it has room to grow and improve. It offers the flexibility to create custom spelling lists along with simple differentiation of difficulty. Teachers can also adapt it to lead to deeper understanding -- for example, challenging students to use contextual clues in the sentences to better understand the meanings of the words and sentences. If words and sentences also connect with content material, kids can use Spell Wizards to support their broader learning efforts.

Unfortunately, the activities students complete are limited at the time of this review, and they're not likely to hold students' attention. The feedback is simple, and it starts to quickly feel monotonous. There's also some clunkiness in the interface, such as clicks not clearly advancing play or clicks leading to screens that don't quite make sense. Kids might find themselves clicking all over the screen to figure out how to advance. The guides are also underdeveloped; they could use more detail both in terms of how the program works and what each feature means. In short, the site shows some promise and could shine with some revisions and additions.