Here are the Rocket Spelling word lists and level numbers that we think align well with kindergarten standards. For more background on this, check out yesterday's post.

Level 1.1 Short 'a' words: had, can, has, am, man, map, ran, sat, cat, dad

Level 1.2 Short 'e' words: net, get, beg, pen, let, red, yes, yet, bed, leg

When creating Rocket Spelling, we purposely decided not to break the site up into separate grade levels. Our hope was that students would be able to work on differentiated spelling practice at their own pace without worrying about whether they were "ahead" or "behind" of words that we had designated were at a specific grade level.

Level 5-3 focuses on the /oi/ sound written as either oi or oy. The general rule of thumb for deciding whether to use oi or oy in a word to make the /oi/ sound is straightforward: in the middle of a syllable, use oi; to close a syllable or end a word, use oy. Simply telling students that oy is used only at the end of a word is not enough, because a suffix can then be added to a root word ending in oy, so words like toys, joyful, and annoying still use oy rather than oi.

Here's a new feature on the Rocket Spelling blog -- Friday fun! We plan to feature a fun spelling-related comic, joke, meme, or idea on Friday from time to time.

For today, we'd just like to point you toward these wonderful spelling pencils...

We think every student in America needs a set of these. Oh, by the way... all 14 of those words can be found right here on Rocket Spelling!

When we designed Rocket Spelling, we wanted to make it so that you could select usernames and passwords easily. For example, if your school has a certain computer login and password combination for each student in your school, we wanted you to be able to simply use those here as well. To make that possible, we added class codes to every teacher's account. This class code allows for there to be more than one student on Rocket Spelling with the same username (as long as they are in different classes).

Straight from our email inbox, here are some of the answers to the most common questions we have received so far about Rocket Spelling.

1. Does Rocket Spelling work on iPads? Chromebooks? Mobile Devices?

The first two levels in Planet 5 focus on -ar, -er, -ir, -or, and -ur patterns. The -ar and -or patterns in level 5-1 are fairly friendly, as they make a predictable, easily distinguishable sound (car, part, for, born) that can be taught in a straightforward manner. The -er, -ir, and -ur patterns in level 5-2 are much more challenging, as they all make the same sound. Students must rely on visual cues to determine what "looks right" instead of using strictly phonetic strategies to help them here.

Rocket Spelling can help you to differentiate your classroom spelling instruction. Here are a few different ways that you could use Rocket Spelling to differentiate your students' spelling:

1. Give Rocket Spelling levels as a pretest to see where your students are at. You might consider having students try a various collection of levels, for example those on short vowels, to see what your students already know before you've taught a certain topic.

2.

Now that we've worked with both long vowels (levels 4-1 through 4-9) and consonant blends (all of planet 2 and 3), we're ready to try to combine those two strategies in a fun review level (4-10). This is the most challenging level in the first 4 worlds, as students have to adjust between various vowel patterns, including long vowels with a silent 'e' and long 'e' sounds made from 'ea' or 'ee'.

In addition to classroom teachers, homeschooling parents are also invited to take advantage of getting Rocket Spelling for free throughout the 2017-2018 school year! Our registration system defaults to creating a minimum of 5 students in every teacher account, but not all of those accounts need to actually be utilized. If you have fewer students in your care, you can still create a teacher account with the minimum of 5 students, set up just the number of student accounts you actually need, and your student(s) will be able to log in and play right away!