It can be tricky teaching vocabulary to elementary students, but it is an important part of any homeschool curriculum plan. My oldest 2 children have had the chance to review a quick and entertaining online vocabulary program called WordBuildOnline, from Dynamic Literacy, over the last few weeks.
Each student needs their own account because the program adjusts to their individual learning levels and comprehension of the material as they complete exercises. It is an entirely web-based vocabulary curriculum split up into Foundations Level 1, Foundations Level 2, Elements Level 1, and Elements Level 2. Each level contains 25 units of study.
How We Used WordBuildOnline
The students that I had using this program were my 10 and 8 year olds. We just finished up 4th and 2nd grade coursework with them, and I was curious how they would do with this program. We haven’t formally worked on vocabulary except briefly in their main curriculum.
My students both used Foundations Level 1. In this level, they were reviewing and practicing using the most common prefixes and suffixes.
The program is set up to have the student complete one lesson per day, but my kids worked quickly through the lessons and completed up to 5 per day. I had to put my foot down there, though, and stop them at that many exercises. Since they completed them quickly, they still never spent more than 25 or so minutes on any given day. Some took less than 2 minutes, and on some they ended up using up all of their time (15 minutes) because of how long they took trying to figure it out.
Fortunately, this program adapts to how they are performing. It individualizes how they move forward based on how they have done in previous exercises.
I put my email address in the “Manage Notifications” section of my parent account so that I could see when either of my kids finished a lesson. I got a quick email that said simply their name and activity finished. (As an example, I got a simple one-lined email yesterday that said, “Michael has finished the activity: “F1 13 FORE Assess M”.”) Since I check my email on my phone frequently, this made it easy to keep tabs on their progress without having to log in. To see grades and other information, however, logging in was necessary.
I was able to log in and view what my kids had completed at any time. I could see how long they spent on the work as well. There is also a cumulative average grade given for each student.
I liked that I was able to see exactly what my child put as their response to every question, not just if they got it right or wrong. On some of the exercises where they typed in a definition, I was able to see if they were messing around or really responding.
I did find one day where my son had typed in a bunch of special characters as his answer on a few problems instead of even attempting to use words, so I knew that he had likely gotten distracted and I had to have a talk with him about it. We worked out a solution as to when and how he would complete lessons (which involved working on a computer away from his little distracting brothers!).
There is an option to reset any lesson to have the student do it again, but we never used this. As the program explains, this should only be used if their session is interrupted. Otherwise, constantly resetting a lesson to make them repeat it will stunt their progress overall. Remember, the program automatically adapts based on how the student performs.
Overall, we are enjoying the program. My students are getting solid vocabulary lessons and are learning how to find word meanings when they encounter new words. The lessons are short, with a predictable format repeated for each unit. We will definitely finish this program or both kids.