FREE-WARE SPELLING PROGRAM FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN What is SPELLING Program? As USF's growing commitment to community service, the SPELLING program was developed to help all elementary students improve their spelling abilities. SPELLING is distributed free of charge or obligation, and provides a fun and easy way to practice the weekly spelling lessons. Parents enter the spelling words and can monitor how well the children are doing. What are the programs in the SPELLING Program and how does one play these programs? The spelling program has three different games - FLASH SPELL, HANGMAN and UNSCRAMBLE. 1. The object of the FLASH SPELL game is to retype the word that flashes on the screen. When you click on GO, a word will appear in the grey box for a set amount of time. This amount of time depends on the skill level you selected. Once the word disappears, you must type it in the white box. When you are finished, click on DONE or hit the ENTER key. The computer will check your answer and update your score. It does not matter if you type the word in upper or lowercase. 2. The object of HANGMAN is to guess all of the letters of the word before the octopus gets hanged. Click on a letter that you think is part of the word. If that letter is in the word, all occurrences of that letter will appear on the yellow lines at the bottom of the screen. If the letter is not part of the word, several parts (1, 2 or 3 depending on skill level) of the octopus will appear depending on the skill level you selected. If you guess all the letters of the word before the entire octopus appears, you win. 3. The object of UNSCRAMBLE is to unscramble the letters at the top of the screen and place them in the correct order in the boxes just below the letters. Depending on the skill level you choose you can make 1, 2 or 3 mistakes on each word. How do I get the program? Children in Ms. Besterman's class can get it from the teacher OR Download the spelling program from http://www.eng.usf.edu/~kaw/software Unzip the spelling.zip program using the winzip program (available free for 30 days at www.winzip.com). Once the spelling.zip file is unzipped, run the setup.exe program out of the unzipped files. Follow the instructions on the screen. How does a parent enter the words? Click on the PARENT ACTIVITIES button. It will bring you to a form where you can edit, delete, and make tests. Click on the MAKE/EDIT/DELETE TEST button. Choose the lesson plan of choice, for example, lesson.lsn is the default lesson. Scroll down in the top scroll bar and choose the NEW TEST option. Enter the information about the creator, age group, test name, etc. and click to enter new words. Once finished, click on the FINISHED button and the SAVE THE CHANGES button to save the test. Lesson files can contain as many tests as you want and each test can have as many as 50 words. Words with apostrophes and blanks are not allowed. How does a student run the program? 1. Click on the STUDENT activity button. 2. Click on the lesson file. The default is lesson.lsn. The reason for having a lesson file is that if you have more than one child, each one can have his own lesson file. 3. Once you have chosen the lesson file, choose the test(s). You can choose more than one test. If you want to choose several tests, you can keep the CTRL key pressed, and choose the tests of your choice with the mouse click (left button). 4. Choose your skill level - Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. 5. Click on the game of your choice - Flash Spell, Hangman or Unscramble. You are all set to go! How does a parent view the scores? You can view scores on recent tests by clicking on the PARENT ACTIVITIES button and then on the VIEW SCORES button. The score file holds the last 75 game scores. Who developed SPELLING program? Mark Burris and Autar Kaw of the College of Engineering at USF developed the SPELLING program. If you have any questions or comments, contact Professor Kaw via Telephone: 813-974-5626 E-mail: kaw@eng.usf.edu US Mail: ENB 118, Mechanical Engineering, USF, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-5350.