The first six levels on Rocket Spelling (levels 1-1 to 1-6) focus on short vowels. The 60 words in these levels all follow either a basic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) pattern or are simply two-letter words that begin with a short vowel and end with a consonant (e.g. am, if, on, us).

Our primary goal in these levels is to ensure that students gain complete mastery of the short vowel sounds. Even many older students cannot remember the short vowel sounds in isolation. (If you teach second through fifth grades, try asking your students to all say the short 'a' or short 'o' sound one time in unison. Expect terrifying results. This is because those students that struggle with this have moved almost exclusively to a visual strategy for spelling. More on that tomorrow.)

While it might be tempting for teachers of older students to skip these levels and begin with more challenging words, we think using these levels as a quick review is worthwhile. It's important for students to be able to identify not just the short vowel sounds, but to also know the term short vowels so that we can use that term as we describe other spelling patterns, such as doubling single consonants that follow a short vowel when adding an -ing or -ed ending (levels 9-3 and 9-4).

For many students, these will be the first levels they attempt on Rocket Spelling. We hope that your students get hooked on the suspenseful revealing of the results of each challenge level. We hope they notice that they are getting points for time actively playing (1 point per second) as well as for correct answers. We hope they immediately want to retry levels where they missed words.

As they get started, your students will also want to check out their awards tab, where they will see their first badge appear after reaching just 1,000 points. It might be fun for them to set individual goals as to what they hope to accomplish on Rocket Spelling in the coming weeks and months as well.