Literacy and Vocabulary Tools Galore

Literacy and vocabulary tools are the theme for this post. Over the past week, I have had several people suggest some great tools that I would like to pass on to you. Let me know what you think!


  • Ruzzle - a student of mine named Jazzmine introduced me to this "Boggle"-like word game, where you compete against friends and others to form words. When I asked her if she ever heard of Boggle, she replied "What's that?" I certainly felt my age after that one. What I like about the game is that you can use it on your iPad, iPod, or iPhone and it allows you to play in practice mode. I'm interested in knowing, how would you use this in your classroom? 
  • Teach Your Monster to Read - this site out of the UK is a very interesting way of teaching your students how to read. The free site gives students the chance to navigate through 8 levels of game-like scenarios, to practice letter, reading, sound recognition, etc. My only concern is that this site originates outside of the US and some of the spellings are different; however, it may be a great way to learn basic skills in a unique way. To learn more about how this game works, check out this link.
  • Lexipedia - I have heard of visual dictionaries, but I have never heard of a visual thesaurus. It is very much like Visuwords, in the sense that you type in a word and get a visual of potential words. The site gives you the ability to filter words, based on parts of speech, synonyms, and antonyms. This is a tool that could be used in any classroom K - 12. 
  • Mathwords - ok math people, here is a great tool to use in your classroom! Mathwords provides a visual and text definition of Math vocabulary words on any level imaginable. Need to know what a ray is in Geometry? How about what an average is in a fifth grade class? This may be a great resource to have available for students to use inside and outside of the classroom. 


What tools would you add to this list? If you have an idea, please share!

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