Dynamic Literacy: WordBuildOnline #review

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 Literacy and Vocabulary skills are probably one of the biggest concerns for homeschooling Moms.  Online I see many questions for both of these topics.  We worry because we know these skills are foundational, and we know that our children need a firm grasp.

The Schoolhouse Review Crew was sent several products from Dynamic Literacy to review.  I'll share the products and then tell you which one we were chosen for!

Products:

 WordBuildOnline


WordBuild: Foundations, Level 1


WordBuild: Elements, Level 1 Set (Includes WordBuild the Game)

For this review we were given a subscription to WordBuildOnline.  This is completely online as the name suggest (some of the other products included physical books.)  The subscription came for two students to have their own login. 



What it is and How we used it:

The online program is based on learning through Greek and Latin Morphemes.  According to google a Morpheme is:

1. a meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided (e.g., in, come, -ing, forming incoming ).

   • a morphological element considered with respect to its functional relations in a linguistic system. (as per google)

     
     

     
     

So to break that down - studying morphemes basically is breaking down words by prefixes, suffixes and root words.  By learning the meanings of these parts you can take a big word and break it down to figure out the meaning.

WordBuildOnline uses fun activities to help kids learn these morphemes.  We had my middle son who is just finishing up 7th grade work on this program. I thought it would be a good fit for him because he had just finished up his current vocabulary program but wasn't quite finished school for the year.  He had the time and the place in his schedule. This was easy for him to use, he was able to login without any help from mom and do the activities.  First he would watch the 'lesson' video then he had 5 activities to complete.  Each activity had time limits on them for 15 minutes so that your student didn't get stuck in one place. Xander had no problem completing any activity before the 15 minutes.  In fact he didn't really need much more than 20-25 minutes each day to complete the video and activities.





For the parents - the program would email me the progress the student was making.  I liked knowing that my son had completed the task like he said.  It helped with accountability.

Thoughts:

This was a fun program for my son.  He likes having some computer time each day and this was a great program to fit in (rather then playing a game!)  It was good for supplementing our current vocabulary and I know it is preparing him for the future when he has to take the SAT test.  The main thing we liked is that the graphics and activities felt like games so it wasn't a chore to complete.  The added emails for parents was also a great bonus!

Check out the other products that The Crew Reviewed by clicking on the link below.