Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
Hi guys, it is Jacqueline, and today we are doing a homeschool review and looking at Wordbuild Online by Dynamic Literacy, LLC.
Wordbuild Online is a completely online hands-off morphology (the study of the forms of words) curriculum/unit for students who are already reading but need to learn words or prefixes and suffixes and how to build words. I started with Foundations Level 2 for my elementary school kid and I went ahead and did Elements Level 1 for my high schoolers to help make sure they have a firm grasp.
You purchase the units individually (at about $30) and then assign them to the students using the free parent and student accounts you create. You get to keep each unit for as long as it takes for your student to finish it. Each unit ranges from 25-34 lessons.
The Parent Dashboard
From the parent dashboard, you basically put your student into a class and you will receive emails every time they complete an activity. There aren’t any real details in the email but from the parent dashboard, you can see a lot more.
I was looking at my 15-year-old’s progress report (in the video) and she was doing Elements Level 1. The guidelines say when you start, regardless of how old you are, if your student is past the Foundations, possibly like sixth grade and up, then start at the first class of Elements regardless of how advanced your student is.
Basically, the reporting tells me how long it took them to do each thing, what their score was, and their rating (it looks like four is their highest). If they complete a lesson and you think they didn’t do well enough or don’t have a firm grasp on the material, you can reset it.
Other than that, I don’t really have to do anything. Looking at the high school class and it says they were learning the affix “ment”. So compla-ment and how it modifies words. For the younger ones, they’re kind of learning some of the other modifiers. Like the first unit in Foundations Level 2, it starts off with how to use “ly”.
It’s good. It’s fun. There’s a gamification element that kids love. You can allow them to work as fast as they want or tie them down to like one lesson a day. If you’re wanting them to take time and you think they’re just gonna rush and not soak it in. So depending on your student, you can make that decision and you can modify it as you.
So it’s something fun, but there’s a little “but” here. They ask you to define words as the student, and there isn’t necessarily a super right answer. And when I say that, I mean, I did a test one because my daughter had told me this who’s in high school and I kind of shorted some words and left words out of a definition that would really, you know, affect it. And it didn’t really seem to catch it. It’s more of a rudimentary practice using the definition the kids already know and adding a modifier to the definition. Kind of more of a drill.
But not to say it’s not good. You just need to be very clear on what it does. If you’re looking for a definition of the word quickly to build the vocab associated with the word quick, this doesn’t do that. But it does really help them to learn how to modify and build words. If you want to check their choices and definitions, you can do that part by part. But if you are looking at hands-off, it is great too for the morphology.
Final Thoughts for this Homeschool Review
So final thoughts. This is great. Especially if you have a student you just wanna make sure has a firm foundation and prefixes suffixes, what words mean and how they build together. I think that’s an important concept that not everyone gets. I really like the fact that it is a completely parent-independent online learning situation. If you’re looking for independent activity, it’s fun. They get to take a break from the pencil and paper. Get on the computer. That’s a great aspect of it. So on the whole, I really like it!
Check out some other parents’ thoughts and find their reviews over on the Homeschool Review Crew site!
