Students from Carinity Education Glendyne are taking on the world – one word at a time.
Learning is not a sentence for Year 9 students who are kicking goals in the international Literacy World Word Mania competition.
Word Mania is an online teaching tool which helps students improve their spelling and vocabulary through playing interactive educational games.
A total of 104 schools from countries such as Australia, Egypt, Bermuda, England, Nigeria, Wales and United Arab Emirates are competing in the Year 9 competition.
The team from Carinity Education Glendyne is ranked in the top quarter of all schools in the competition and currently sits 14th out of 83 Australian schools, including government and private schools.
Carinity Education Glendyne Curriculum Coordinator Madelaine Brown says 30 Year 9 students are participating in the global competition.
“Word Mania is a word-building competition. The more complicated the word, and the faster you create the word with accurate spelling, the higher the student points are,” Madelaine says.
Samantha Poblete from Literacy Planet says Word Mania scores are calculated by taking the top 50 scores of at least 10 students and adding them together.
“This way schools are not advantaged by having just one amazing player and are also not disadvantaged by starting the competition late,” Samantha says.
Carinity Education Glendyne students have been using the Literacy Planet program, which incorporates the Australian Curriculum and ties in with language studies at the school in Hervey Bay, for the past 12 months.
“Literacy Planet is used as a supplementary program to support reinforcement of explicit classroom lessons. This assists students to development their confidence and practice their skills,” Madelaine says.
“Literacy Planet tasks supplement and reinforce student learning in class. Teachers select what content is required to be used to address individual student needs.”
Currently on the fringe of the top 20 in the competition rankings Carinity Education Glendyne’s team hopes to qualify for the Word Mania finals, to be contested by the top 10 schools globally, starting June 23.
