Students are invited to compete in a free, fun online literacy challenge to win up to $10,000 in prizes for their school.

Word Mania, the world’s biggest online literacy competition, has arrived in the United States, with students invited to join the fun for the chance to win up to $10,000 in prizes for their school. Word Mania is not the average spelling bee. Created by LiteracyPlanet, an award-winning English literacy (language arts) education program, Word Mania challenges students to build as many words as they can in three minutes, from 15 randomly generated letter tiles.

Word Mania is fun to play and free for any student from Grades 1 to 9 to enter.

LiteracyPlanet CEO, Adam McArthur, said the company was excited to see students in the US involved in such a fun literacy challenge; “In 2018, we had students from 106 countries participate in our competitions, building 208 million words from more than 9 million games. We are looking forward to seeing what US students can do this year. It is perfect for students at all levels.

“The highlight of Word Mania for the LiteracyPlanet team is not just seeing such a high level of engagement from students, but noticing the impressive rate of improvement over the course of the competition.”

Word Mania challenges students to practice crucial literacy skills including affixes and plurals (morphemes), word recognition, vocabulary, and word knowledge.

LiteracyPlanet US Commercial Director, Ashley O’Connor, said she was looking forward to seeing children in the US rise to the challenge; “Word Mania is a great way for students to improve literacy skills while having fun. It’s been shown to improve a variety of literacy skills including phonics, spelling, vocabulary and word knowledge and we see an average 36% improvement in scores over the competition. We look forward to generating the same excitement and success we have seen internationally here in the United States.”

LiteracyPlanet Word Mania USA opens for practice on 14 January 2019. Schools can register now for free at https://www.wordmania.com/us/register.

Students will have up until March 1 to sharpen their skills as part of the Practice Round. The Competition Round will then run from March 4 to March 8.

The top-performing schools will qualify for the Final Round from March 13 to March 15 and have the chance to win up to $10,000 in prizes.

To register for a login to play LiteracyPlanet Word Mania USA or for more information parents and teachers can go to https://www.wordmania.com/us/register.