Celebrity Spelling Tests

I have been using the free iOS app photospeak for sometime, primarily as an alternative way of recording. For those who haven't used the app, photospeak allows you to record a voice over an animated face. This face can be one within the app or an imported image. In class we have created animations of Isaac Newton explaining why the Jenga tower collapsed, Winston Churchill persuading people to enlist and vegetables explaining what nutrients they contain and how these are used by the human body.

Photospeak a free iOS app

Recently a pupil asked if we could get Simon Cowell, whose animation we were using as a stimulus for our writing, to do our weekly spelling test. So that Friday the X-Factor judge obliged and read out the spellings. 

The interface for recording animated voice-overs

Since then this idea has grown and we now have a celebrity spelling test every Friday conducted by a celebrity of the children's choosing. Spellings are given out on Friday allowing children the option of writing sentences, including these words, for use in the next spelling test. It has definitely made the weekly spelling test fun and the children are motivated not just to learn the spellings, but to use the words in the correct context.