Special Spelling User Guide - Activities
Overview
There are 6 activities: Spell The Word, Find The First Letter, Find The Ending, Find The Vowel, Find The Double Letters and Find The Sound. To select an activity, tap its picture in the main view.
On handheld devices, we recommend using the activities with the device in landscape orientation, as that will allow the best use of the available screen area.
All the activities have a tool bar at the top of the screen. This has a back button (< Activities) on the left to return to the main view, a Padlock button, a Restart button to restart the current activity, and a Settings button on the right.
The Settings button can be used to access settings specific to the activity. To configure settings that apply to all activities, use Actions in the main view instead, and refer to Chapter 3.
Pressing and holding the padlock button for 3 seconds disables the Activities and Settings buttons, and the padlock icon changes to closed. Pressing and holding it again undoes this. Disabling these buttons can be helpful while playing, to prevent your child accidentally selecting a different activity, or exploring other parts of the app.
Settings for All 6 Activities
Each of the activities has its own settings, and these enables you to customise the activity for your child's ability. For example, once spelling skills have been developed, you can remove the hints and add extra cards for Spell The Word and retain hints for the other activities which they still have difficulty with. As your child develops skills related to each activity, you can then adjust the configurations to make the activities more challenging.
Letter Range - Minimum Word Size
You can set the minimum word size from 1 to 20. The default is 1.
Letter Range - Maximum Word Size
You can set the maximum word size from 1 to 20. The default is 20.
For example, for younger children if you want to select 3 letter words only: set minimum word size to 3 and maximum word size to 3. An alternative would be to create your own profile (word list) that just contains 3 letter words.
Level of Difficulty - Extra Cards (for Spell The Word, Find The First Letter, Find The Ending, Find The Double Letters, Find The Sound)
By default there is 1 extra card. This means that only the letters needed to spell the word are displayed and can be selected by the child to put in any order. You can specify from 0-10 extra cards, which makes the activity more difficult as the child develops spelling skills.
Level of Difficulty - Vowel Cards (for Find The Vowel only)
By default this is set to 1. The options are 1-5. If 5 is selected you will see all 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u). For words that contain more than one vowel, the default is to show each possibility. For example, for the word boat with an extra vowel setting to 1, you will be shown two vowels (a, o).
Hint Options - Text Hint
Options are Always Hint (the letters to find are shown in the word), Flashed Hint (the letters to match are shown then disappear, if you tap the image then the flashed hint is repeated), and None (there are no visual text hints shown). The default is Flashed Hint.
Hint Options - Image Hint
By default this is ON (i.e. the image is shown in the activity). If set to OFF then a sound icon will be shown instead. Pressing the image in each activity will repeat the enabled hints.
Spell The Word
This activity allows you to spell a word. There are various settings to allow you to configure the activity for your child's ability. For example, you can change the settings so that the child is spelling 3 letter words or longer words, enable and disable the hints, and include extra cards.
The default settings are:
- Minimum Word Size = 1
- Maximum Word Size = 20
- Extra Cards = 1
- Text Hints = Flash Hints
- Image Hints = on
Find the First Letter
The aim of this activity is to match the first letter of a word.
The default settings are:
- Minimum Word Size = 1
- Maximum Word Size = 20
- Extra Cards = 1
- Text Hints = Flash Hints
- Image Hints = on
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Find the Ending
The objective of this activity is to select the ending of the word from the choice that is displayed.
The default settings are:
- Minimum Word Size = 1
- Maximum Word Size = 20
- Extra Cards = 1
- Text Hints = Flash Hints
- Image Hints = on
Find the Vowel
The aim of this activity is to correctly match the vowels in a word.
The default settings are:
- Minimum Word Size = 1
- Maximum Word Size = 20
- Vowel Cards = 1
- Text Hints = Flash Hints
- Image Hints = on
By default the vowel cards is set to 1. The options are 1-5. If 5 is selected you will see all 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u). For words that contain more than one vowel, the default is to show each possibility. For example, for the word coat with vowel cards set to 1, you will be shown two vowels (a, o). For the word book with vowels cards set to 1, you will be shown (o, o).
Find the Double Letters
This activity allows your child to match double letters in a word. For example, as shown with the default settings, the word dress has "ss" so two options of double letters are shown for the child to select from.
The default settings are:
- Minimum Word Size = 1
- Maximum Word Size = 20
- Extra Cards = 1
- Text Hints = Flash Hints
- Image Hints = on
Find the Sound
This activity selects words which contain ir, ur, or er. There are activity-specific settings for Find the sound, these include:
Level Of Difficulty - Choices Shown
The default is 1. Options are 1, 2 or 3.
Level Of Difficulty - Allow er Words
Default is ON, options are on or off.
Level Of Difficulty - Allow ir Words
Default is ON, options are on or off.
Level Of Difficulty - Allow ur Words
Default is ON, options are on or off.
The default settings are:
- Minimum Word Size = 1
- Maximum Word Size = 20
- Text Hints = Flash Hints
- Image Hints = on
