Wordy Qwerty is a program designed to help your child achieve greater fluency in reading and writing. It is geared towards 2nd and 3rd graders who are reading. (Talking Fingers has a precursor to this program called Read, Write and Type as well. You do not need to use that program first though. We have not used it and had no problem with learning Wordy Qwerty.)
There are 20 lessons in this program that are geared towards teaching spelling rules-each lesson taking one rule. For each lesson, your child plays 6 games (actually one of the "games" is listening to a jingle on that lesson's spelling rule). The games on each level are the same, simply using different words for each level. Here is a quick synopsis of the games:
1. Your child is given words they must categorize into one of two lists. For example, the words may all start with the letter g in them and your child needs to separate them into words with the "g" sound and words with the "j" sound.
2. Next there is a song about the spelling rule for the lesson.
3. For this game, your child is given two "words" that rhyme and are spelled differently. Then she needs to look at the words and determine if they are both real words or if only one is a real word and click on the appropriate boxes to show this. For example, the words given may be trade and traid. Your child would need to click on the box for trade to show that it is a real word but traid is not.
4. Now your child is given a short four word sentence. Balloons pop up with words on them and your child needs to click on the words of the sentence in the correct order of the sentence. Some of the balloons contain words that are not in the sentence. The balloons disappear so your child must be quick.
5. In this game your child is given two sentences or one sentence with two parts. The whole thing is read to them and then the second part disappears and your child needs to type out what was said, spelling everything correctly.
6. The last game is a fill in the blank story. Your child reads a story and occasionally comes to a spot that is blank. There is a drop down menu and they must choose one of the three words to go in the blank. Only one of the answers is correct.
After these games, they are given a spelling test. The words are some of the words used in some of the games and follow the pattern of the spelling rule for that lesson.
Our experience:
I used this program with my 3rd grade daughter (Creative Princess) who reads very well. Asking her opinion, she said the games were too easy and the spelling words were too easy. I watched her work on a couple of the levels and I would agree that overall, the spelling words were easy for her, but at least one of the levels provided a challenge for her-the third game where she had to figure out which words were real words and which were not.
The fill in the blank stories do not use the words in the spelling list. This seemed a little out of place to me. I would have preferred to see the spelling words being used here for reinforcement.
The balloon game was pretty quick and I think a child who reads slower would be frustrated. By the time they located the right balloon with the word they need, it would disappear.
Creative Princess did not enjoy the songs with the spelling rules and asked if she could skip the songs. I didn't let her. I do see the appeal in these songs for other children however.
When the child spells a word wrong on the test at the end of the level, they are not shown what they spelled wrong. Also, the parent/teacher account shows the percentage but doesn't tell what word was spelled wrong.
I appreciate that the games themselves are pretty self correcting. If your child types something wrong the letter does not show up and a little buzzer sounds. Some of the games tell you what to type next, some just have you try again.
I like that the spelling words for the test are all part of the spelling rule for the lesson. It makes the most sense to help solidify the spelling rule.
Although this game was not right for Creative Princess, I can see that other children would enjoy it and learn from it. I think this is something that my Precise Prince would have liked when he was in first grade. You can go here and try out one full lesson for free.
Wordy Qwerty can be purchased as an online product or in CD format, although the CD format is not currently compatible with Windows 7 or Mac 10.6. Prices start at $25 for one online user, $35 for the CD and go up from there. Check out there website for full details on products and purchasing.
Go here to see what my fellow crewmates had to say about Wordy Qwerty.
(I was given a subscription to Wordy Qwerty in exchange for my honest opinion. No other compensation was received.)
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