Instructify

I have to shake my head every time I hear some Congressman arguing for cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because, “Cable TV provides plenty of early childhood educational programming.” Don’t get me wrong, my son learned a ton about inductive and deductive reasoning from watching “Blue’s Clues” and “Dora the Explorer,” but for actual reading skills like letter identification, phonics and blending, Public Television is the best source of materials. I will never forget how hilarious and memorable Gawain’s Word made learning the concept of blending. But how to get these great lessons into your classroom on your time?

Enter Teachers’ Domain, a resource for teachers from WGBH in Boston. There are a number of special collections, Early Literacy (with Between the Lions), Civil Rights, and Polar Sciences. A special collection is in the Open Educational Resources which will allow you to download, share and remix. Get some of this educational video goodness and start blending up some learning in your class. -ALICE MERCER

Teachers’ Domain: Gawain’s Word: box
Teachers’ Domain: Open Educational Resources
Teachers’ Domain: Home

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Do your students struggle on spelling tests? For every easy word like “cat” or “dog” you have tricky ones like “perceive” or “through.” It’s as if the English language were designed to fool people. “I before E except after C?” Capricious and arbitrary, if you ask me. And why would you have silent letters? Are they spares in case other letters in the word break down?

Education.com has a few spelling tips designed for teachers and parents in their article, The Fast Track to Spelling Success. One method they advocate is the “Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check,” method:

“Ask your child to write his spelling words in the first column, one underneath the other.

• Look. Ask your child to look at the word and read it aloud. For example, “friend”
• Say. Then spell the word letter by letter while continuing to look at it. “f-r-i-e-n-d”
• Cover. Your child should now cover the word “friend” (either with her hand, another piece of paper or by folding that column underneath the others) and try to write “friend” in the second column, without looking at the first column.
• Check. Now, have your child check her work by comparing the first column with the second column. If it’s correct, move on to the second word. If it’s incorrect, ask her to repeat the steps, this time trying to write “friend” in the third column.”

The article also has other ideas for different learning styles. My favorite, designed for the kids who can’t sit still, is to have them practice spelling while doing a physical activity, such as jumping rope, shouting out a letter with each jump (also a good way to burn off some of their extra energy).

All the methods listed in this article require lots of practice. However, if you follow their advice, that practice will be more productive - and more fun. -BILL FERRIS

The Fast Track to Spelling Success via education.com

I have always depended on the kindness of talking cartoon animals. Whether I learned about hibernation from Yogi Bear, or was exposed to opera by Bugs Bunny, animated animals are dependable and oft-overlooked fonts of knowledge. Why should learning to read be any different? That’s why, when teaching your elementary students their ABCs, let them have a look at Sight Words with Samson.

The Samson in question is a dog wearing a track suit who speaks with a vaguely German accent (I think - it’s hard to tell). The site lets kids play games that strengthen their word-building. After starting off by viewing a word and listening to it spoken out loud in a sentence, kids are challenged to pick the word out of a lineup, or to spell it. With practice, your students will be able to know and spell words on sight.

Sight Words with Samson also has other resources, including printable flashcards, lesson plans, and worksheets. In my opinion, though, the online word games are are your best bet. The video game factor will keep kids more interested, and Samson will hopefully open your students’ eyes to the wonderful learning possibilities of listening to talking cartoon critters. -BILL FERRIS

Sight Words with Samson

8 Letters in Search of a Word presents players with one scrambled 8-letter word to unscramble. If you can’t quite figure out what it is, make the most of the letters you’ve got and find as many words as you can before time runs out. You get more points for longer words and for finding them faster - you know, the usual. At the end of each round, the letters are unscrambled, so students can see the word they missed.

I often find in word games that I learn a lot of new words as time runs out. With only a few seconds left in a round, I’ll try any letter combination that even looks like a word (did you know”ree” was a word? Neither did I!). So in addition to practicing spelling and word identification, your kids can expand their vocabularies. Another potential project? Challenge their spelling and their creativity by having them try to unscramble a new name for the game. The game itself is fun, but “8 Letters in Search of a Word” is an awful title. -BILL FERRIS

8 Letters in Search of a Word

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