Mrs Wordsmith - The EdTech startup for kids that's making learning new words a doddle

by Startacus Admin

Words. Perhaps we could insert some kind of eloquent, almost poetic sentiment here about how words do stuff and things and are good; however, we didn’t have the benefit of learning from London-based EdTech startup Mrs Wordsmith (not to be confused with Mr Swordsmith, we were mildly disappointed to discover).

The team behind Mrs Wordsmith includes professors of linguistics, lecturers in corpus linguistics, a lexicographer who was once the editor-in-chief of The Chambers Dictionary, a neuroscientist of whom subscribers can ask questions, and the award-winning artist behind a range of characters such as those from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Madagascar.

Together, the team is on a mission to make young people smarter. As they put it, “The more words you know, the smarter you’ll grow”. You know they’re onto something with that, because it rhymes.

Mrs Wordsmith says that normal learning is inefficient, and that after the first 5000 high-frequency words, schools aren’t so good at improving students’ vocabularies. The team is the perfect mix to first identify the right 10,000 words every young person should know before the age of 18 - words that improve comprehension, accelerate learning, and drive academic achievement, apparently - and to then make learning these words easy and entertaining by bringing them to life with humorous illustrations.

And so far so good for Mrs Wordsmith - with a seed investment round of £2 million pounds last month led by Kindred Capital and including investment from US edTech investor Reach Capital, SaatciNvest and Ropart Asset Management. 

Suitable for children with dyslexia and those on the autism spectrum, Mrs Wordsmith makes the journey to 10,000 words engaging, fun, and funny. A 6-month subscription will give you monthly deliveries of daily worksheets, reference mats, flashcards, rewards, and a weekly email with instructions and tips, as well as the aforementioned access to question the team’s neuroscientist about how to get the most out of the product.

Until we’ve completed our 10,000 word journey, you’ll have to make up your own clever pun about taking our word for it.  

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• #children
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• #vocabulary
• #education
• #mrs wordsmith
• #language
• #school
• #london

Published on: 9th July 2017