Step 1: Log in to Wordshark Online

1. Click on the link provided in your email or copy and paste the unique URL into a web browser – Google Chrome is recommended.

1. Enter your username (your email address)
   

1. Use the ‘one time’ password provided in your email to get into Wordshark. Then, sign back in and create your own password.

Step 2: Follow the step-by-step assistant to add users

1. After selecting the Start Set Up  button, a step-by-step assistant guides you through the setup process: you can now check/edit your personal and school details (or from your Dashboard/Profile at a later stage).

1. As Wordshark Administrator, you add teachers and oversee their groups and students: if you want someone else to take over this role you can edit in the Personal Details screen (or if you choose to do this at a later date, click on Edit my profile)
   

1. The setup assistant then takes you through setting up groups and adding any teachers and/or students you wish (or none). You can exit at any point if you wish and do the set-up later. The setup assistant includes a useful diagram of examples of different group structures. Note that all users can belong to more than one group, for example a student can be part of a year group and also of a smaller intervention group.

1. As Administrator you have access to all groups. The assistant explains Additional Teacher Functions which you are given automatically if you are the sole teacher for any group.

1. For adding users, have the following information to hand:
1. the names of groups you want to set up
   
2. a list of staff, with their emails, and which of the above groups they are to work with
   
3. a list of students and which groups you want to put them in
   

Step 3: Distribute Login Details to Students 

1. You will then be given the student login details to print out in a labels format to hand out.

1. You can access these again at any time under Groups & Users/Student Logins including individually saved to clipboard.

1. You may need to help your students to bookmark your unique Wordshark login page - including on their home devices, to access the program in future. Alternatively from the login screen you can create a shortcut, or download one to save to your desktop.
   

Adding users later

1. Under Groups & Users you can select the Bulk Add Users button at any time which takes the same format as above Set Up assistant, to add more groups and users.

1. Alternatively you can add them one-by-one using the relevant tab: Manage Groups/ Manage Teachers/ Manage Students.
   

The Student Journey

1. Firstly all students are automatically given a Shark Challenge (an adaptive assessment and placement test) - please don’t allow any prompts when they are doing this.

1. They will then be suitably placed in Supershark mode (automatic progression) - but you can change their Supershark unit level at any time under Set work/ Change level - Supershark. Have a copy of the Wordshark Course handy (click here), for an overview of Supershark's structured course.

Day to day usage

1. Stick with the default Supershark course for the first two weeks or so for your students (though you as teacher can access all the alternative courses).   

1. Students are given differing sets of games (with an optional reward game every third game).

1. They are moved through the course sequentially – generally they need 85% or higher accuracy in a spelling check game (spelling test) to move to the next list.

1. The students should look at their new target words (under My play words) every time they move to a new list.

1. Use a copy of the Wordshark/Supershark course to plan realistic targets for your students to aim for.  Supershark course follows the Wordshark course – but with automatic progression built in.

1. Aim to use the program X3 per week. This could be during lessons, homework and clubs - to fit in with the school’s timetable.

1. Reports are updated overnight so daily progress will show up the following day.

Additional features exist (including set work, other courses, own lists) and we can explore these with you once you and your students are up and running.

You may notice some changes from time to time as the program is constantly being updated.