How do I give my class weekly spelling or vocabulary words?

Open your class's Word Lists page and click New word list. Pick this week's list from Bookroo's own spelling lists, paste your own, or pick the chapters of a book you're reading. Bookroo adds a meaning and a sentence to each word. Students practice from their dashboard, you start the test when they're ready, and you see exactly how each word was misspelled. Word Lists is in beta, and it's in the sidebar for classes in grades 1–5, or with no grade set, and for Reader Plus families.

1. In your class, click Word Lists in the sidebar, then New word list.
2. Add the words:
   • Bookroo lists: a year of weekly lists for grades 1–5, one spelling pattern a week, in the order children learn them (short vowels, then vowel teams, then endings and syllables, then roots). Every fifth week reviews the four before it. Your class's grade opens first, at the week after the last one you used, marked Next. Grades 1 and 2 add two common words that don't follow the rules yet, like said and was. Tick Add challenge words for a few harder ones, or pick another grade for a group that needs an easier or harder list. Students see the week's pattern when they practice.
   • Type or paste: the words from your spelling program, or any you choose. Put one a line or separate them with commas. Numbered lists paste fine. To use your own sentence, add it after a colon: harvest: The farmers brought in the harvest.
   • From a book: for vocabulary from a book you're reading together. Pick it from the books your class has been reading, or search for it. Then tick this week's chapters. Each word comes with the sentence it's in.
   • Review: words the class missed on your last test.
3. Check the list. Every word gets a short, student-friendly meaning, and a sentence if it doesn't have one. Anything Bookroo wrote is marked Suggested. Click any word, meaning or sentence to change it. If a word may be misspelled, it's marked in yellow with the word Bookroo thinks you meant.
4. Under Who gets it, leave Whole class, or pick Some students to give the list to a group.
5. Click Save and open practice. A list can have up to 25 words; 5–15 a week is typical.

Give groups different lists: most classes spell at two or three different levels, so each group can have its own week. Pick Some students and tick the group, or click a group you used before (Same as Week 6: Abbie and Trenton). Only those students see the list. A group's Next week follows on from the latest Bookroo week its students had. A group from the spelling check starts at the week the check suggests, then follows on from its own lists. Under each list's name, For shows who has it; click Change to add or remove students.

Find each student's list with the spelling check: click Spelling check on the Word Lists page, then Start the check. Students spell 25 words from their dashboard, each read aloud in a sentence. The words get harder every five, from short vowels to word roots, and a student stops early after spelling one or none of a set of five right, so younger spellers don't face the hardest words. Students don't see a score, and it earns no points. For each student who finishes, you see how many they spelled right, where it got hard, and the week of Bookroo's lists to start on, with the patterns they missed. The start comes from the first set of five where they got fewer than four right; a slip in an easier set doesn't move it. Suggested groups puts students together by the grade of that week; click Make their list to open a list for the group at their week.

What students do: a Spelling words card appears on their dashboard. In Listen and spell, they hear each word, its sentence, then the word again, and type it. A right answer shows its meaning. A wrong one shows their mistakes letter by letter and the right spelling to study. Then the word is hidden and they spell it from memory before moving on. Missed words come back at the end of the round, and Practice the 3 you missed (with their own number) gives them another go at just those. Unscramble is a warm-up game, and its answers aren't recorded.

Give the test: click Start the test when the class is ready. Practice ends, and each student spells every word once, with no hints. The sentence on screen has a blank where the word goes, so the test never shows the word. At the end, students see their score and earn 25 points for each word spelled right. Capital letters only count in words that have them, like names and days of the week: Wednesday needs its capital W, but Cake is fine for cake. When everyone's done, click Close the list to take the card off their dashboards. If some students haven't finished, Bookroo asks first. Closed it too soon? Open the list and click Reopen list: the card comes back, and students who were partway through pick up where they left off. A spelling check reopens the same way, with Reopen check.

Read the results:

• Students: each student's practice (words spelled right, and how many tries) and test score, and every misspelling drawn against the right word. Wrong letters are red with the right one above, a left-out letter is a red gap with the missing letter above, and swapped letters are underlined.
• Hardest words: the words the most students missed, and how they spelled them.
• Patterns: what the class's misspellings have in common, such as vowels, swapped letters, double letters, word endings or capital letters. Hover over a misspelling to see its pattern.

Before the test starts, these show what students missed in practice.

Make a review list, in the ⋯ menu on a tested list, starts next week's list with every word the class missed. Words that come back stick better.

Print and send home: click the ⋯ button beside the list's name. Print the test sheet gives you a sheet with each word, its meaning and its sentence to read aloud, and a numbered answer sheet for students, for a test on paper. Once students have taken the test, Print results for families prints a page for each student to send home, like a graded paper test: their score, every word with a check or how they spelled it, and the words to practice. A student who didn't finish gets a page saying so; a student who didn't start the test gets none. Delete list, in the same menu, removes a list and everything students typed for it.