The Teacher Toolbox

October was another HUGE month for adrianbruce.com. 82 979 individuals made 124 869 visits to my site viewing 480 456 pages. They downloaded 46 973 Word resources and 16 953 Acrobat files. Widen those doors people, it’s time to truck my head through. hehehehe

The most popular downloads were -

1. Printable Snakes & Ladders – this is a blank template for making reading games.
2. Change 3 - a printable word card game for learning about long vowel sounds.
3. 4 in a Row - a printable word game that kids love. Includes a blank template.
4. 3d Shape Game - a printable concentration game that focuses on the properties of 3d shapes.
5. Reciprocal Reading Cue Cards – my modifed teaching prompt cards for this powerful comprehension strategy.
6. ‘Here’ Question stems – for the 3 Level Guide Reading Strategy
7. Place Value Charts - (I really should finish the decimals charts)
8. The T Puzzle - a problem solving activity but please stop asking for the answer. I’d hate to rob you of the ‘A-ha’ feeling
9. Square Pyramid Net – I’m sure this was all the Uni students out on prac
10. Phonics Posters – A Few Things for Word Walls
11. Symmetry Webquest – A Visual Reference for Learning About Symmetry

I’m thinking that this translates to a lot of time saved by teachers and a fair amount of learning of skills on the part of students.

A huge thanks to Kellie from somewhere in Australia for sending me her list of i_e words that can be attached directly to the fish in my fishing game.

This phonics word game is one that students in the early years really love.

See what you think and feel free to use the new form to recommend it to your friends.

cheers

Adrian

Here are 3 excellent word games to download play with your students.

The first game focuses on the phonics blends of pl, br,gr, st, fr, sl, scr, str, dr bl, fl & cr.

The next is a tried and true card game that focuses on ai, ay, ee & ea.

The third game I’ve been working on focuses on contractions. (A favourite of many teachers)

I’m currently trying to improve the navigation on my website and have added a ‘breadcrumbs’ tree at the top of the pages to let you know where on the site you are.  Hopefully this will help people find more of my games easily.

I’m also in the process of adding a ’search feature’ to each page to help people navigate to games that they have used in the past but just can’t remember where they are

The ‘Tell a friend’ form at the bottom of each page is an attempt to have people spread the word about my site. Feel free to send a few emails to friends about these games.

cheers

Adrian

Yesterday I found out several of my ‘Four in a Row’ games had broken links to the Word versions and the blank template. After a few choice words pointed at Dreamweaver I’m thinking it’s all fixed now

Sorry to those 645 people who couldn’t find the game they were after last month.

Syllabification Game

Blank Game Template

cheers

Adrian

This Capital Letter Matching Game is one of the first I ever made. Tonight I discovered there were several ‘techo’ things wrong with the webpage so now it should be up again and working fine for all to download.

The game is for four or five players and has several common uses of CAPITAL LETTERS in the chicken’s speech bubble.

Capital Letter Matching Game

Have fun cutting out the pieces

Adrian

PS If you find this game useful feel free to email the link to your friends

Over the years my reading games site has grown to be rather large but I must admit I have concentrated on creating content rather than spending a little time on navigation.

I’ve added a search function – links to all other sections of the website – the ability to buy me a beer or 17 for a job well done – shortcuts to tag the site on social bookmarking sites – links to my blog – My Amazon Wishlist (a big thankyou to the person who is sending me David Warlick’s book on Classroom Blogging) – the ability to join my newsletter group – and the ‘tell a friend’ applet.

Over the next week I plan to work on a ‘Comprehension Strategy’ section to the site and a ‘Recommended Books’ section. I believe that phonics is only one part of a very good reading program so I’m looking at expanding the site in that direction.

cheers

Adrian

In the last 7 days the site has had 52,653 page views. Given these numbers I sometimes have to be reminded myself that each of the resources downloaded has its own story.

Here are two such stories that came through today.

SRI LANKA

Your site is incredible.I’m a teacher of English as wel as a mother of
2 kids. Your site will be very useful to me. I found your site today I
loved it from the very moment I entered it.The most important thing is
it’s free. Actually I can’t afford to spend on resources as I’m not
that rich and don’t have a credit card.I thank you very much and I hope
that you would continue your good work. May God Bless you.

& also from Sri Lanka

Dear Adrian,
I’m a teacher of English and everyday I surf internet for reading
resources. I came across your site today and it’s wonderful.I don’t know
what words I have to use to thank you.THANK YOU VERY MUCH.I hope that you
ould continue the good work.

Sort of keeps it real for us in the West

cheers

Adrian B

In 2002 when I first started my website, it was so I didn’t have to keep making my teacher friends floppy disks of my teaching resources.
Five years later… I now give away c. 40 gigabytes of teaching resources a month. This equates to c. 29 464 floppy disks worth of educational resources each month. Now I’m a thinking that if you have any teaching resources that the world might need… you must work out a way to share those resources with those less fortunate than you.

cheers

Adrian

NB In 2006 I had to take the Clustr Map off my site in an attempt to speed up loading time

Super Bill has been at it again and has sent me a collection of his word and reading games. There are 8 games in this collection. The games aid in the teaching of CVCs, syllabification, digraphs and ‘chunking’.

‘Chunking’ is the breaking down of words into smaller recognisable parts. It is just one strategy you can teach emerging readers as part of their collection of word attack strategies.

For those who have seen a few of these games… ‘Game 8′ is brand new.

Hope you enjoy the games.

Adrian