We use Words Their Way as our spelling program here at Concordia, and although I really like the program, I always found the logistics of it somewhat complicated.  If you aren’t familiar with Words Their Way, the program is based on students learning spelling patterns by sorting lists of words into groups.  It’s fun, kinesthetic, but also super messy.  Each week the students cut out the words in their list, then they have to keep those words (which are now little bits of paper) all week.  Many of my third graders had about a 50% success rate with lot losing any of their words by the end of the week.  This was even worse with their set of words at home.  Also, taking the time to check their sorts each week was a pain.  I wanted something that would check their word sorts automatically so that if they sorted it wrong they didn’t have to wait till I got back to them to get it right.  Enter “The Magnet Maker.” This website allows you to create digital word sorts.  If you’ve ever played with the magnetic poetry that people often have on their refrigerators the format of this program will look a bit familiar.  There are many pre-created word sorts in the program but you can also create your own sorts, save a web link and then send it home with students.  I am proud to say that once I introduced this to my students, we had a 100% success rate with not losing any of the words in the word sort.  :)