Review of Spellzone
Aaron Warren
English Co-ordinator and Year 5 Teacher
Wellington Prep School, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Used Spellzone weekly for 1-2 years
Sep 2022
There are some good features; however, there are also some aspects of it that could be improved. Some of the children at our school can get bored with the games and I would encourage Spellzone to look at Sumdog as that has a brilliant gaming platform, but doesn't have some of the excellent features that Spellzone has.
Reply from Spellzone:Many thanks for the review Aaron! Our aim is to offer a blend of activities such as the spelling course, Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check, Listen & Spell and games. We hope to add more games in the coming months.
Aaron Warren found Spellzone:
- Significantly reduces teacher workload“It's really quick to generate a list of spellings and assign the children tasks.”
- Does not significantly reduce attainment gap“I like the idea of the course pathway but it's not interactive enough for children to use. There's a lot of reading involved, whilst I think it should be more game-based and interactive for the children to navigate through. The CP is a huge advantage to Spellzone but I think the execution of it isn't quite right. We now use spellzone to create lists for our children and set tasks based on their spelling patterns from their NGST spelling test. It works quite well for that.”
- Slightly provides school data“The spelling tests can be quite helpful to show progress but we use NGST to more accurately show how children are spelling certain patterns.”
- Does not significantly improve attainment“Please see previous comments.”
- Does not significantly build student knowledge“It is limited due to the way the CP works. I like the explanation of the spelling rules and this can be useful when introducing a pattern to the class. I don't feel the CP is engaging enough for the children to learn from - even though it has good content. I feel it is more for teachers than for students.”
SHARE:
About EdTech Impact
We've been evaluating the EdTech marketplace since 2019, empowering educators to make informed decisions, and to help providers increase the quality of their products.
Read more about our mission, our quality framework and reviewer guidelines to learn how we keep EdTech Impact a collaborative and trustworthy place for everyone.