Archive for the ‘reading games’ Category
Reading Comprehension Game Improves Learning Skills
October 2nd, 2010Playing Reading Comprehension Game
Improves Learning Skills
What if you could play a game and improve your child's reading and listening comprehension at the same time? It also sounds too good to be true doesn't it? But a game really can improve reading comprehension. As a learning disability specialist and board certified educational therapist I have probably worked with every type of reading problem, dyslexia, learning disability imaginable over my 37 years or teaching.Reading Comprehension Problems
Many of my students had reading comprehension problems. They were very frustrated with their reading assignments. It was so hard for them when they had to read their social studies book and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. And they would often read the chapter multiple times and still not be able to answer the reading comprehension questions. The problem was, no one had taught my students how to read for meaning. There is a specific way you read for reading comprehension. There is a certain way to listen for listening comprehension.Solution to Reading Comprehension and Listening Comprehension Problems
As a result of teaching frustrated students of all ages, students that had given up on being able to understand what they had read, I decided to create a game that would teach them how to read for meaning and improve their reading comprehension. I knew from both working with my students and from research on learning that game playing was a great way to teach and reinforce skills. So I developed The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap to help them improve their skills. What The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap™ did for our child: "The Comprehension Zone: Rocket Rap had amazing results for one of our children. We have been working with him on comprehension for years. I often have him draw pictures of what I’m reading, we act things out and we read just a few phrases at a time and ask him questions whenever we are dealing with auditory learning. He simply struggles in this area. I was interested to see how he would do with Rocket Rap. We began playing Rocket Rap often. The improvement was rapid and dramatic! By the end of the second game he was able to play successfully and currently it is easy enough for him to pick out facts while listening that he likes to try reading the card himself. For the first time in his life our child will raise his hand when Mark asks questions during family worship and he will know the answer. He will come up to us after church and spontaneously tell us something that he learned from the sermon. He is so amazingly proud of himself and I’m amazingly thankful. For our child who has always struggled with comprehension, for these results, I would happily pay double. We’ve tried things similar to this in the past, we’ve been focused on this problem for years, but Rocket Rap has been the first activity that has been successful.” Kimberly from RaisingOlives.comStop the Summer Learning Slide With Grammar Game
June 7th, 2010
Summer stretches out before you. Your kids are excited about being out of school. However, it doesn’t take too long before your kids are claiming they are bored. So, to keep your kids interested over the summer, one of the easiest things to do is to provide fun learning games for your kids.
Research has shown that when kids are not involved with learning activities over the summer, their skills don’t just stay where they were at the end of the school year. Instead, your kids lose ground and retention of what they learned over the prior school year. So, one thing you can do to prevent this learning slide, is to play learning games over the summer.
Here is a Review of Bonnie Terry's learning grammar game The Sentence Zone written by Lori Seaborg of http://www.FreelyEducate.com:
We are having a great time learning grammar.
"What?!" you say, "You're having great time in grammar class?"
Why, yes. That's exactly what I meant. Thanks to The Sentence Zone, a grammar game designed by Bonnie Terry Learning, grammar can not only be bright and colorful, but as much fun as a game of Monopoly. Here is how it works, as described by Bonnie Terry:
If you're looking for a fun way to improve writing and grammar skills, this game is for you! For 2 to 6 players, grades 1st and up. Rules are easily mastered. The Sentence Zone can be played at six levels - from Level 1 in which the player builds a subject and verb sentence, to Level 6 in which the player builds complex sentences with independent and dependent clauses. With over 500 color coded cards, students are sure to be unique and entertaining every time. A great reinforcing individual activity where a player keeps track of his score from day to day, trying to top his previous score, or a great group activity where competition drives creativity and learning.
It took me a little while to figure out The Sentence Zone. It wasn't a game that we could play right out of the box. But after reading the directions, and realizing the many directions the game could go, we got started learning our grammar and - enjoying - it! Since enjoyment leads the way to a love of learning, The Sentence Zone is a success in our home.
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So, do yourself a favor, check out The Sentence Zone and Bonnie Terry's other reading game and math game too!
6 Must-do Learning Games & Activities For the Summer
June 3rd, 2010
Can you do your own summer learning program?
Should you do your own summer learning program?
Fact: More than half of the achievement gap present in 9th grade between lower- and higher-income children can be explained by summer learning loss.
Make Learning Stick with learning games and reading fluency training over the summer. There are many things you can do at home to bridge that summer learning gap.
- Reading Fluency using Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills…and Yes…it only takes 5 minutes to do. Sally Shawitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia states, "I urge parents to make fluency training their number one priority."
- Take a weekly trip …to the zoo, a local park, the pool, the river, a local factory…and afterwards as a family write down what you did and what your favorite part was…using the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills and create a booklet to keep for all of your weekly trips.
- Do some nature activities such as listening to outdoor sounds, nature rubbings, shape hike, incher hikes … again use the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills to describe what you found or did.
- Activities to do at home like making puppets and putting on a puppet show. Bake cookies together, have a backwards day where you eat dinner in the morning and breakfast in the evening, do add-on-stories. Again write down your favorite things or worse things about the activity.
- Have a Game Night or a Game Day…choose learning games…they are fun as well as work on skills. Some great ones are The Sentence Zone (play & learn sentence building and grammar while having fun) , The Comprehension Zone (play & learn reading comprehension and listening comprehension), or the Math Zone (play & math calculation practice).
- Read books together…and write a review or report on it, or have a review night where you all act as book reviewers of the book you read.
How to Improve Reading and Memory Skills and Still Have Fun
January 7th, 2010
What can you do during the winter weather to help your kids improve their skills? This question is a frequent one for me. Parents are always interested in helping their kids, but it is sometimes hard to stay motivated, especially during the winter months.
The following activities work well with all kids, whether they have dyslexia, LD, ADHD, are falling through the cracks, or are gifted. I have done the activities successfully with all of them!
I have two favorite things to do to not only help my kids, but to stay motivated doing it too. The first thing is to have more frequent game nights, playing educational games - learning games like The Sentence Zone, The Comprehension Zone, or The Math Zone. When you play games with your kids, they build skills while having fun and get a lot of modeling from you too. At the same time you get to have quality family time, so it is a double win situation.
The other activity I like to do is to have an evening where I might turn the heat up a degree or two, and everyone gets dressed in ‘summer’ clothes, and we have a ‘picnic’ on the floor of the living room. Afterwards, we might tell stories to each other – what I call ‘add-on stories.’ In these stories one person starts off and then the next person adds on to the story. We keep going round and round and the story gets longer and longer. The only thing is, the kids have to pay attention and so do you, so what you add on makes sense to the story. This builds listening comprehension and memory as well as a really good time.
Hope this is helpful!
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
Question About Comprehension Zone: Age Range? Reading Game
December 12th, 2009Hi Susan,
The Comprehension Zone can be used from 2nd grade - 12th grade (reading levels) or when played for listening comprehension, from 1st & up. The Comprehension Zone comes with 3 sets of cards - 2-3 reading level, 4-6 reading level, and 7-12 reading level. It can be played simultaneously with all levels. Can also be played for listening comprehension at a level that is higher than the students reading level. All of my products are multi-age/grade level because I primarily taught from 1st - 12th in my classrooms and/or center. I transition my kids that were in kindergarten as soon as I can into using the products, but never had too many that were in kindergarten. I am able to use the products with 1st - 12th. Hope this helps, Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET