Samson’s Classroom~ Sight Words, Spelling and Reading

Samson’s Classroom is a company that offers online practice in 3 separate areas; sight words, spelling and reading.

Samson’s Sight Words works by having a preset list of 224 of the most common words broken down into 4 levels, which are then broken down into 7 easy to digest groups of words each.  Each group of words includes 8 words.  In order to learn the words, you go through 5 steps. 

• Learn words – where you see and learn the words 
• Build words
• Identify the words
• Spell words
• Missing Words

 

Each of the steps is in a game form, however there is not any fluff of a game.  It is more a basic and to the point game.  There is a scoreboard for both the parent and the student to see.

 

When Katey gets a word correct she is usually giggling as the funny stuff Samson does to show her she was right.  She also enjoys working toward a black belt. 

Notice above I said 224 most common words, this is because some of the words can be phonetically sounded out.  Words like big, see, it, dog, can, etc.  This hasn’t been a problem for us as I see how repetitive practice of these common words has really boosted her overall reading ability.  

There are also offline resources to use, such as games and worksheets to cement these words within the student. Our favorite game was Kaboom, which you play using the flashcards you print out along with some Kaboom cards.  There are also many other games you can play with the flashcards.  There is a variety of worksheets to go along with each list of words.  These offline resources have really been a gem for us. 

 

Samson’s Spelling has over 5000 words.  These words are broken down into a variety of lists.  There are 3 lists for each grade level K- 5th.  There are also lists divided out by topics, such as Days of the Week, Commonly Misspelled, Furniture and more.  There are also lists broken down by word families, such as it, up, og.  You may also create your own list.  I chose to do this option most of the time.  I chose words based on the ones Katey was misspelling in her morning journal prompts. 

Samson’s Spelling breaks each list down into 4 fun steps. 

• Study Zone – where you and Samson learn and study the words.
• Missing Letters – where you have Samson karate chop the missing letters.
• Spelling Scramble – where you help Samson run around and find all the letters to spell your word before getting caught by a spider. 
• Crunch Time – where you spell all the words on your list correctly to keep Samson warm and away from Wally the Walrus.

Samson’s Reading is a place where you can practice reading comprehension.  You read a story and answer a variety of questions about it.  For each question you earn a chance to play a game called “Hammer Time”.  This is one of those carnival type games where you hit the button on the ground with a hammer and see how high you can get it to go.  Katey does love earning chances at this game.

Some of the reading passages in the level one where way to hard for her, while others were just right.  One thing is that the reading passages are not in order of easiest to hardest within a level, this made it hard for me as well as her to know if the passage was going to be to hard.  Also once you click on the passage you must complete the entire thing then.  There is no way to preview it and see if it is at your child’s level.   I did find a way around this by going into the parent dashboard and deleting the scores so that your child may start over. 

 

A subscription to Samson’s Classroom includes all 3 Samson activities for $30 per year for one student or a family membership which includes 4 students is $50 per year. Need more students?  They have school options too.

To see what others think of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

Disclosure: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products, like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.  No other compensation is provided.