Roy the Zebra

I have used some of the reading games from Roy the Zebra with one of my students that has problems with blends.

It's a simple activity, but used with some hands on activities and sounds work, one simple game can last a 30 minute lesson.

Many of the games on the site are ideal for IWB and emergent readers.



Activities on the site include blends, double consonnants, rhyming words, alphabetical order, high frequency words and long vowel phonemes

Starfall

The online books that my students love most are, of course, those that are interactive.

Starfall is one of their favourites. Even the students who are a little older, but need extra practise, don't mind working on activities on the site because it's colourful and has funny little activities along the way.

All About Me is one of their favourites on the site. You get to create a character, then read sentences about that character and a little sing along song!

Perfect for K-2 students, but also useful for ESL students when learning about the names of items around the house, school or the parts of their bodies.

I have one student who has a lot of letter/sound problems and finds it difficult to blend. He is in Grade 5, but we've used the letter blocks and ONLY the first page of the booklet to click on the letter so he can hear the sound. We then use the Learning to Read activities to look closely at letter/sounds and even use things like the pictures of where your lips and tounge are to help make the sounds. He will click the letter himself, listen and then repeat. After a while he makes the sound at the same time and knows he's doing well when he can't tell the difference.

When I had a younger class I used the site as part of our guided reading lessons. It replaced the listening post, and the kids knew which book they'd read and which was next and during the course of the year they worked through the different levels. Their Scope & Sequence is useful and I used it in my programming.

The site has a lot of useful downloads including picture/word sheets that can be used for pre/post reading activities.

Games to Teach Mutliples/Factors

See the review below for Number Cop.

While searching for other games for my students to try out I also found the following

Pumpkin Multiples Simple game where you can chose a multiple then you have to move a cute little ghost to "catch" the numbers it is a factor of. At the end of the game it tells you your score and reminds you of the numbers that are multiples of your target number.

Product Game A little more challenging, but a 2 person game, suitable for an IWB. Students use their knowledge of timestables and a little strategy to win a "Connect 4" type game.

Grid Game A simple grid game where students have to find the factors of a given number OR find the odd or even numbers.

A smartboard resource can also be downloaded here and a bubble popping game (no download needed) here.

A trial version of Prime Time Maths, which is a tetris style game, can be downloaded. Even the first level is enough to reinforce factor trees. The only way to get rid of 8 is to click 2x2x2 and 18 3x3x3 (so cubed numbers as well!!!).

Number Cop

Number Cop I have to confess I spent way too much time playing this game this morning.

I was looking for a game that could be used by my students to reinforce prime/composite numbers. Part of the learning cycle is to learn about factors & multiples.

The game has 3 levels of difficulties and you can chose to "chase down" prime numbers, rational numbers, fractions in their lowest forms, or square numbers. You can also just leave the selection blank and click one of the numbers on the number pad to play a multiples game.

The graphics are fun and it sends out enough numbers to make even the lowest level fun and challenging.

As an added bonus there is feedback both during the game and at the end of the game to tell the students which numbers were wrong and why.

Interactive Whiteboard Maths

The following are just a list of links to maths games that are good for groups on the IWB. They do not require keyboard input to answer questions.

ADDITION

Maths Baseball - Addition Game that caters for different abilities in a class.

Numbers - Addition game that moves very fast! Can be downloaded or played online.

SUBTRACTION
Snowball Fight - Solve subtraction problems correctly and you get to throw the snowball, make a mistake and it splatters right on the screen!



MULTIPLICATION

Egg Static Drop - Multiplication Game where you have to catch eggs for multiples of a chosen number.

Pizza Pizzazz - Solve a multiplication question and deliver a pizza to the table with the number that matches the answer.

Disco Dino - Another mutliplication solving game, but at the end you get to create a dinosaur dance!

Fish - Similar to Pizza & Disco but these fish are fast!

NUMBERS
Splat Square is a simple 100's chart but with sound effects and colours. Play games like "What Number Comes Before?" Other ways of intergrating the grid into lessons can be found here and here.

Gamebone is another fun way of using a 100s chart to learn.

Arcademic Skill Builders

Arcademic Skill Builders promise the following:

Arcademic Skill Builders are research-based and standards-aligned educational games that offer an innovative approach to teaching basic academic skills. We incorporate features of arcade games and educational practices into fun online games that will engage, motivate, and teach your students.

Play games for free right here on our site! Click a button below to play. We have multi-player and single player games. In the future we'll add features enabling you to save records, tailor content for differentiated instruction, and pinpoint student problem areas!

The few games I played were fun, in that competitive way. The number facts questions would suit lower levels, but the ratio questions are definitely for higher level students (I felt very challenged!!).

The mutliplayer games mean that students can play against others in their class or against others in the world. There are also single player games for the less competitive.

The games are a chance to reinforce internet safety rules as well, as children have the opportunity to use their own user name or a randomly generated one. While it gives their name, there are no other identifiers (eg country, age).

Categories include addition & subtraction games, multiplication & division games, fraction & ratio games, language art games (eg verbs, vowels, capitals).

While not printable, there is feedback about percentage correct and the questions that were wrong. A teacher could take a screen dump for each child's game if a record was needed.

Read Write Think

Read Write Think has a lot of useful tools for making writing fun in the classroom. The visuals are the sort that would usually appeal to children and teachers will like that each tool also includes a list of ways for using the tools in class activities. Each of the links below will take you to the activities pages which then contain the links for the teaching tool.

The Letter Generator

The Letter Generator is a useful tool for students to learn the parts of a business or friendly letter and then compose and print letters containing all the essential elements needed for both styles of correspondence.

Animal Inquiry

Supporting inquiry-based research projects, the Animal Inquiry interactive invites elementary students to explore animal facts and habitats using writing prompts to guide and record their findings. This is a good introductory activity for students before writing information reports. It would work well as an IWB activity when working on a joint construction.

Comic Creator

The Comic Creator invites students to compose their own comic strips for a variety of contexts (prewriting, pre- and postreading activities, response to literature, and so on). The Comic Creator invites students to compose their own comic strips for a variety of contexts (prewriting, pre- and postreading activities, response to literature, and so on). This would be perfect for introductory cartooning or simple conversation writing for younger grades.

There are many other useful tools at the site, and a list of the rest of them can be found HERE

Interactive Phonics for IWB

Here are a list of useful resources for phonics activities (please note that this list will continually be added to, so call back again!):







Middle Vowel Sounds



This IWB resource gives students a 99 second challenge to use a common vowel combination to make the longest word they can from the variety of letters shown on the given tiles. Non-scoring words such as those that do not contain the given vowels or are incorrect will result in points being taken away. A four letter word will score 1, a five letter word 2, 6 letters will score 3 and more than 6 will score 5. Each game is timed with the time available be set by the teacher. There will always be at least a 4 letter word that is possible for each selection.

Maths Games with Feedback

Tutpup is one of my favourite ways of getting the students drilling their maths facts and it also gives feedback.

Anything that ranks them or gives them instant feedback seems to be the students favourites.

Here are a few more useful maths games which also provide feedback for both student & teacher

Math Magician
This is great because it gives students feedback on their speed & accuracy. If they complete the activity in under a minute and get 100% correct, it also gives them a certificate with their results that they can print. This is a good way of keeping track of their results and rewarding them at the same time! A little bit of competition amongst themselves always goes a long way. It drills addition & subtraction facts to 20 and division & multiplication based on the times tables.

Multiflyer
This game has a built in "cheat sheet" for kids who need extra help with their multiplication facts. If they don't know the answer they can use a grid system for calculating the answer. The faster they can answer though the more points they get. When the student choses to "end the mission" they are given the option to print a "printable report". Great for keeping track of their own improvements.

Alien Addition
Part of the Arcademic Skill Builders site (a review to come) this single player game allows students to set their level of play (eg number facts from 1-20 or 10 to 20) and speed to drill addition number facts up to and including 20. At the end of the game a report of success can be printed. Students who get through all levels are able to print out trophies. One teacher has all of these on a trophy wall!

Arithmetic Four
A basic looking game based on "Connect Four" and played by two players. Each player must answer maths questions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) to earn a piece to place on the board. Parameters: time limit, difficulty level, types of questions. At the end the teacher can review and record the scores - but making a printed copy requires a screen dump!

Another simple game/drill site is Harcourt's That's A Fact Students can drill basic number facts in the four operations. It also allows them to chose vertical or horizontal algorithms to suit individual preference. Drills are timed, although there is an untimed option. At the end it tells you which facts were not complete and which were wrong. This page can be printed (answers not given) or students could copy the algorithm and correct answer into their books!

Place Value Activities for IWB

Here are a few IWB activities I've found useful for my Learning Difficulties students. They can of course be used with younger classes.

There are hundreds and hundreds of online resources for IWB, especially from the UK so it's worth doing your own search. Once again, I'd love for you to share any links that you have.

Shark Numbers - Place Value
Kids get given worksheet after worksheet by their of Dienes blocks activities to answer. Instead of doing the worksheets we do this activity from ICTgames.com on the whiteboard. They have so much more fun. It looks at place value for numbers from 9 to 9999.

Place Value Abbacus
This game is another useful place value tool. Students move beads onto the place value abbacus to make the given number. Very hands on learning! It is from atschool.co.uk which requires registration (and costs money!) but it does have a couple of sample activities, including this one.



Decimal Place Value
My students aren't up to decimal place value yet, but I've got this stored away in favourites for when we need it. Basically it's a pull apart activity from TopicBox.net to show what (eg) 3.1 means (ie 3 plus 0.1)



Number Place Value Playground
A reading/writing number place value game from LearningClip.com. It doesn't have too many to solve at one time (a plus for Learning Difficulty students) but moves them on to reading and writing numbers! This website requires registration, but it's free and the website has HEAPS AND HEAPS of useful resources. More to be mentioned over time.

Partitioning Numbers

From the same website as the one above. Students partition numbers (eg 528 into chunks of 500, 20 and 8). Another from the site which helps with partitioning numbers in a simpler (quicker) form is Archery Bullseye other great activities on place value and partitioning from this Learning Clip can be found HERE