Teach Your Monster to Read Part II

-

Update!

Back in May 2013 I used Teach Your Monster to Read with a group of two kindergarten classrooms. The program was a success and I blogged about the ease of use for educators and the enjoyment of the students involved (see original post).  Since then I have relocated to a new school within my district and have had the opportunity to introduce the program to eight classrooms at the kindergarten and first grade levels.  The response has been overwhelmingly positive!  Many features of this program have remained the same as written in my post below but there have been some additional updates that have made the product even better.

The Same (but still fantastic)


  • Game 1: First Steps is focused on helping students develop speed and accuracy of letter recognition. The game contains 8 islands each with 4 graphemes to focus on.  Students practice these sounds in different game settings and the islands of sounds must be completed in the order they are presented. There is some basic blending practice and a total of 8 "tricky words" are introduced.  
  • A progress report is maintained for each sound so teachers can easily see how well students mastered them.  In the event that a student struggles with a sound it will continue to appear in mini-games later on. 
  • Students still get to design their monsters and receive rewards for their monsters when they move to new islands. 
  • Students can still create a poster with information about their monster
  • Teach Your Monster to Read has been highly responsive to social media shout-outs!  It's fun for our students and educators see a response from a company who's product they enjoy.

New Additions to the Program

  • A second game has been added (!) with a third in production to be released in 2015.  Game 2: Fun with Words is designed to be completed after Game 1 is complete. This game has 7 villages (as opposed to Game 1 islands) and introduces new graphemes with lots of blending practice.  Instead of collecting rewards for completing each level students now collect stars that can be used to buy clothing and accessories for monsters. This second game is chock full of "tricky words"- 30 to be exact. There is an introduction to reading and comprehension of sentences such as "Can you get her red hat" and "Can you get me some chips?".
  • An iPad app is available but the web-based version remains free
  • A great addition for teachers is the ability to print ALL student parent letters, passwords and posters in bulk.  Before you had to select each individual student to print posters but now the entire class set can be printed as one PDF. This feature is a welcome addition.  
I've enjoyed being able to introduce this program to new students and educators and have been pleased with their response to it.  Give it a try!




Recently I went back in and recorded the students' voices talking about their monsters! I generated QR codes that link directly to these recordings.  Great way for parents to be able to hear audio!



Thanks to @MonstersCanRead for listening! 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twenty Years is Worth Two Cents

-
Image
Time It’s been an interesting year.  My twins entered middle school (time flies).  My mom died unexpectedly leaving me parentless with probate and a house built by my grandfather in 1948 (time stands still).  Oh…and CPS is shuttering my school  (time to move?). The school I’ve built my career at and spent the last twenty years with students. I sat in the library with my colleagues and was read two scripts; one by my principal and one by a Chicago Public School Central Office employee.  With that, it was done (or in the beginning phase of 'done'). Teachers were told to “have a good day of teaching and learning” (one of our daily mantras) and were sent off to teach their students after just being told our school was not remaining open after this school year but our building would remain open with a new faculty and three student bodies.   George Leland school would inhabit our building while May Community Academy and Louis Armstrong Math & Science Elementary would be
Read more

Understanding Plagiarism

-
Image
Our middle school is 1:1 with Chromebooks so students spend a fair amount of time researching topics online.  A teacher noticed there is a lot of copying and pasting of information by students and asked me to come in and have a conversation about plagiarism.  I developed a Prezi with an accompanying notes guide for the students to complete as I presented the content to them.  The Prezi and notes guide are below.  As we wrapped up the students were able to use their Chromebooks for a bit of fun (with a topic that isn't so fun).  We played a Kahoot game where they reviewed concepts about plagiarism from their guide.  They loved it!  What I loved is that Kahoot also provides a summary of student responses to the game- I can see which students missed specific questions which allows me to follow up if needed. Resources used in the presentation (good for teachers and students): http://www.plagiarism.org http://en.writecheck.com (this has a plagiarism checker available) https://o
Read more

Water the Flowers, Not the Rocks: Tips from 10 Years of Instructional Coaching

-
This June I wrapped up ten years of instructional technology coaching. Soon (tomorrow, in fact) I will begin a new journey in my career where I will still utilize my coaching skills but in a different capacity. This new opportunity has caused me to reflect on lessons learned throughout my time as a school-based coach. If you are a coach or aspire to be one following are ten tips I've learned during my ten years in the role. Be a model . Practice what you preach! If you want your teachers to join Twitter make sure you are already there. If they would like to try a new tool or lesson familiarize yourself with it first in order to lend additional support. Be honest . If you don't know something, say so. As a coach, your faculty will look to you as an expert. There have been several times throughout my career that I've said, "I don't know that tool/concept/strategy but let me see what I can find out about it." If you are a former classroom teacher, remind peo
Read more