The Teacher Toolbox

What’s new @ www.adrianbruce.com

Archive for October, 2006

(0)

Children Create Their Own Puzzles

Posted by Adrian on Oct-10-06
Word Searches / Find-a-Words are funny beasts. Kids love to do them, and are often motivated to do do them, but oh so often they just end up ‘colouring in’ lessons.

I find a better way to engage the kids is to have them involved in the creation process of the puzzles for their friends to solve using free software.

Have a look at how to do it and some of my ideas for having your children create their own puzzles. Then implement the idea in your classroom on Monday.

cheers

Adrian

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Another Poster to Think About ;)

Posted by Adrian on Oct-9-06
So often people in our work and private lives say all the right words but lack any appropriate actions or follow through.

I find this poster useful in so many situations as a way of gauging the effectiveness and motives of the people in our world :-)

cheers

Adrian

BTW There are 7 people now on my Frappr map. Are you there yet?

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Puzzles

Posted by Adrian on Oct-8-06
Every year I have a huge focus on problem solving as a thinking skill and everyone asks for copies of the problems that I’ve used over the years. This problem is one of my favourites and is the first on the problem solving section of my website.

I usually use this puzzle on my first day with any class then do the ‘goldfish bowl’ thing where I sit back and watch how they attack it. Some students get focused and manipulate the pieces and think. Some will stare at it and try and visualise a solution. Some will whinge that it is too hard. Some will ask you to show them how to do it in a horrible voice. Some do all of these things in about 2 minutes but the thing that is really nice is to see the look on their faces as they achieve the ‘a-ha’ feeling.

Feel free to download this puzzle give it out then try and solve it with the kids. Demonstrate being a life long learner :)

cheers

Adrian

BTW this is a great activity if you are a casual teacher.

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Friends

Posted by Adrian on Oct-7-06
I’ve been thinking about signing my site up for a Frappr account for a while now and today I finally took that first step. So now here I sit with all my friends :)

I’m hoping that this site will serve to give a bit of a human face to my site. I see a lot of games being downloaded and every day I receive emails of thanks but I’m hoping Frappr will add an extra dimension to my site.

Go on… click the Frappr link and add yourself. You know you want to lol
cheers

Adrian


Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Web 2 Maps

Posted by Adrian on Oct-6-06
There are so many cool free tools out there on the web. Clustrmaps is a little something you can use for free on your site or blog (I think) to show where the traffic for your site is coming from. As you can see North America likes my reading games site :)

Every now and then someone donates a little money to my site. It’s coming in at about one donation every 50 000 games ;) so I might use the last $10 to subscribe to the pay version of Clustrmaps, just to see where people are using my stuff.

cheers

Adrian

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(1)

Collaboration Across the World :)

Posted by Adrian on Oct-5-06
Bill and I have never met. In fact I don’t even know what Bill looks like… yet we work together. Such is the beauty of the Internet.

Bill is a reading tutor in Northern Ireland and every now & then he sends me some of the games that he’s been making and playing with his students. Today a new one arrived and almost immediately I can post it here so that it is available to teachers of the world to use. How cool is this technology?

If you have QUALITY games that you have made & tested with students, the students have enjoyed them and most importantly have learnt from them, feel free to email them to me and I’ll post them on my website with full credit to you.

cheers

Adrian
hey_ad@yahoo.com

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Top Five Teaching Resources

Posted by Adrian on Oct-4-06

It’s the beginning of the month. Time to check out the web stats :)
This month I gave away 73 369 games and posters. Huge!
Here are the top 5 most popular downloads for September 2006.

No 1 - The Magic ‘e’ Rule
No 2 - 3D Shape Concentration
No 3 - Maths Bingo
No 4 - Two Vowels Walking
No 5 - Reciprocal Teaching Reading Strategy Cue Cards

Feel free to have a look at these and anything else that takes your fancy and then send them on to anyone you think can use them.

cheers

Adrian

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Motivation to Automacy

Posted by Adrian on Oct-3-06
The times tables can really be the bane of teachers, parents and students lives. I feel that the traditional rote learning of the tables in order does not efficiently teach automatic recall of individual facts. You’ll often see children (& adults) running through the whole table to find one fact.

This game is a heap of fun and fosters automatic recall.

Enjoy it with your students.
cheers

Adrian

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
(0)

Charity?

Posted by Adrian on Oct-2-06

Every now and then I receive an email about how people are using the reading resources available on my site that leaves me humbled.
This is one of those emails.

Your games are fantastic. I have only just found them.
I am giving a workshop to some disadvantaged teachers
who work under terrible conditions in the rural townships
in South Africa and they asked me for some games that
they can play with the children (usually 50 children in a class, no computers and no photostat machine. Writing in the sand is not uncommon. Your games will go a long way to helping them learn to read.

Kind of makes you think the whole thing is worthwhile. Especially when you are having a ‘bad day’. An email like this can put it all into perspective for you ;)

cheers

Adrian

Tags:
Posted under Uncategorized
Next Entries »