Our latest blog post is by Corinne Clark, who teaches at a primary school near Melton Mowbray, UK. She has written about her experiences using Teach Your Monster to Read with her class.
I first introduced Teach Your Monster to Read to my class at the beginning of the school year. I initially showed it to them on the Interactive Whiteboard, we chose our monster together and played the 1st few levels. It was interesting that the children all joined in saying the sounds, and cheering when we won our prizes.
I then had to teach them individually to log on to their computers. I made a card for each child with the network password, website address and their own log on details on it. This means that I can prop their card on the computer and they know who is ‘playing’, and they are increasingly able to log on independently, with the more ICT literate helping the others.
I often set the children playing the game as morning work – the doors open at 8.45am, but Phonics starts at 9.15am, thus giving the children up to half an hour to play. It’s good reinforcement of the phonics, obviously, but it also helps improve their ICT skills. Occasionally, we will use it as independent work during Literacy, or have it available during play.
During our Phonics lessons, we have an orange monster puppet, ‘The Phoneme Monster’, who sounds out words, segmenting them or eating the appropriate graphemes (spitting out the incorrect ones). We also have another puppet, ‘The Word Bird’, who blends the sounds together again. They make quite a team, and the children love it!
I think my favourite thing about Teach Your Monster to Read is that it works! The children enjoy playing it, and it reinforces their learning.
I am hoping that, as well as doing a topic on Monsters in June, linking the idea of monsters making a range of real and unreal words, it will help prepare them for the Y1 Screening test. Time will tell!
The image above is of ‘Scary Larry’ – a monster created by a pupil at Corinne’s school.
We had an exciting day yesterday looking at a few of the prototype designs and games for Teach Your Monster to Read 2 (current working title: ‘Fun With Words’).
The new game focuses on Phases 2 – 4 of the Letters and Sounds scheme and will be covering blending and segmenting words, as well as reading simple captions.
It’s really exciting to see the new games taking shape; they include a speedy letter grabbing space race, a parachute jump and a hungry word eating Monster!
In the new game, our Monster will be journeying to new lands, finding treasure and meeting other characters along the way.
Above is a sneaky peak at one of the beautiful game illustrations for the Monster’s journey, designed by Rich Wake.
I can’t wait to see more!
We’re delighted to announce the winners of our Draw a Monster Competition. Hooray!
First Prize goes to Sophie for the beautiful winged monster above and our runners-up prizes go to Skye and Jed for creating these two cheery and colourful monsters.
Cathy at NurtureStore and her daughters had the task of picking out the 3 worthy winners, based on which of our whopping 140 entries they would most like to have as a pet. Not an easy task I imagine!
Congratulations to Sophie, Skye and Jed on winning the competition. Your prizes (a stack of Usborne books) will be sent out to you this week.
THANK YOU for the many wonderful and creative entries we received, the sheer talent and imagination out there is astounding!
To see the full gallery of monsters, go to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.359065924185472.85413.194975207261212&type=3
Exciting news just in – Teach Your Monster To Read has been nominated for an award! And it’s a good one, too.
We’re delighted to be in the running for a BETT award, which recognises excellence in ICT educational resources. We’re up for the ‘Early Years Digital Content’ gong, and we’re honoured to be mentioned in the same sentence as some of the other nominees.
The winners – as judged by a formidable bunch of ICT teachers, educational consultants and education journalists – will be announced in Jan 2013 at a swanky black tie do. Which should be just enough time for The Monster to dig out and dust off his tux…
Keep everything crossed for us!
It’s Halloween, it’s half term, so what could be better than a monster drawing competition?
We really love monsters here at Teach Your Monster to Read and we’d love to see your little monsters’ monster designs.
We’re giving away £200 of Usborne books to the monsters our judges would most like to have as a pet.
For a chance to win, we’re asking children to draw (or paint or build) a monster and send a photograph of the finished work to go in our online gallery.
The monster can be one from the Teach Your Monster to Read game or from your imagination – it can be friendly, spooky, scary or silly!
Our judges will be Cathy James from www.nurturestore.co.uk plus her two daughters – they will have the hard task of choosing the winning pet monsters.
Good luck!
Prizes:
1st prize: £150 worth of Usborne books of your choice*
2nd and 3rd prizes: £25 worth of Usborne books of your choice*
* Subject to availability, of course!
How to enter
Send a photograph of your monster’s monster drawing to [email protected]
Deadline is 5pm on Friday 9th November 2012.
The winners will be announced on Friday 16th November 2012
If you’d like to send your child’s first name and their age along with the entry, we’ll add it to the gallery alongside their picture, but please only do this if you’re willing for us to show these in the gallery.
Need some inspiration? Here’s a few monsters I have found! (yes I enjoyed doing this) http://pinterest.com/danniestar/monsters/
The competition is open to entries from the UK only. For the Terms and Conditions of the competition go to http://teachmonster.herokuapp.com/legals
Welcome to our shiny new Teach Your Monster to Read blog. This will be the place where you can find helpful hints and tips on the game, where we share updates about our future projects and game development, and it’s also a space to share your player stories from school and home.
We’re also hoping to discuss some of the latest issues surrounding technology and teaching, reading and literacy, gaming in education and parenting young readers.
Ambitious!? Let’s see how it goes…
When it comes to helping children learn to read, it’s useful to have a few different tools to hand. Here are 5 resources to help!
Want help with a specific grapheme or letter sound?
Check out the practice mode on the app (for phones and tablets) or digital flashcards (for PC and laptop).
Want cards or posters?
Print our flashcards or display materials, complete with colourful monsters!
Want to get active?
Get phonics-fit by playing pass-the-sound relay race, or one of our other physical phonics games.
Want to sing-along?
Our animated phonics songs are specially designed for revising and teaching letter-sounds.
Got a phone or tablet?
Download all 3 games for just £4.99 on your iPhone, iPad, Android or Amazon device. Practice mode included.
Enjoy teaching your monster to read!
We have some exciting news from the Teach Your Monster HQ. In our game Teach Your Monster Adventurous Eating, you can now grow your own food in Bub’s Garden!
Using the elevator to descend to the garden, your child’s monster can now dig, plant, water, and harvest their own food in their very own veg patch.
From Planting to Plating: Expand your knowledge while having fun!
Through the veg patch, children can now learn about the journey their food takes from planting to their plates. Witness the magic of nature as you dig, plant, water, and nurture your crops too. At the end, Bub can harvest the fruits of your labour.
Dig, Plant, Water, and Harvest
Engage in various gardening activities as you nurture your veg patch. Dig deep to prepare the soil, plant a variety of vegetable seeds, water them regularly, and watch as your plants grow. When the time is right, carefully harvest the ripe produce and prepare it for Bub to taste.
Satisfy Bub's Taste Buds
Experience the joy of feeding Bub with fresh, homegrown vegetables. Pick the ripest and tastiest vegetables from your garden and offer them to Bub. Watch as the veggies get prepared for Bub too. They can also experiment with different combinations to make mealtime a truly enjoyable experience!
Make sure you update to the latest version of the game to embark on an educational journey through Bub's garden:
App Store
Google Play
Amazon
Website
Enjoy the wonders of nature and the satisfaction of growing your own food.
Good luck, and happy gardening!
From Teach Your Monster HQ
We’re so excited to have you as part of our MONSTER community.
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Our most requested update has arrived! Teach Your Monster Number Skills has a new third stage, focusing on numbers to 100 and aligned with Kindergarten/Year 1 through to First Grade/Year 2.
In our biggest ever update, free for existing users and free for schools on app and computers, you'll get:
- 7 new games, with 70 research based levels designed with our expert Bernie Westacott
- An expanded practice mode with all the new games in, lots of new topics and hundreds of new practice levels
- 3 new islands to explore the new games on in adventure mode with a whole new story and an exciting reward to collect
What are the new mini games?
Monster Trucks
Jump into a monster truck and bash the other trucks! Helps practice quickly recognising numbers to 20
Volcano
Jump up the platforms and save your monster from the fiery lava. Helps children get more familiar with numbers up to 100.
Ghost Train
Get the right queue of numsters riding the spooky ghost train! Helps children practice number bonds up to 20.
Carousel
Help arrange the unicorns in this number line/track game and watch them spin around the carousel!
Bubbles
Pop and merge bubbles to hit the target number. Helps children understand how to compose and decompose numbers.
Storklift
Help your monster load the right number of boxes on and off the truck. Helps with understanding place value.
Dino Dash
Quickly load up the right number of plates of snails to feed the hungry customers. Develops the foundation of multiplication using equal groups/arrays.
What new learning (pedagogical) areas are covered?
- Numbers from 10 to 100, with a particular focus on 10-20
- Counting up to 100, and counting on/from/backwards and in groups of 2s/5s/10s
- Number bonds to 20 - the composition of each number up to 20
- Composition/Decomposition — practicing putting numbers together to understand how the parts can make a larger whole
- Addition and subtraction to 20 and beyond — developing strategies such as Count All, Count On, Count Back, Break Apart to Make Ten, and using number facts knowledge to mentally add and subtract.
- Place Value — understanding the value of each digit in a number based on its position, meaning children grasp why the value of 1 changes when a 0 is placed next to it to represent 10
- Multiplication — working with equal groups, repeated addition and arrays to develop the early foundations of multiplication
- Manipulatives — new manipulatives including double ten frames/twenty frames, and number tracks
