Web lesson that builds knowledge of shapes
By:Michael Cousins
This website hosts a very simple yet informative learning tools that help children learn shapes. The shapes learning lesson allows the learner to choose the language that they would like the lesson to be in, The shapes lesson has six incremental stages that guide the child through learning of the shapes. The first lesson begins with a colorful shape that is manipulated by the child by dragging it to its match in a field of six silhouetted shapes: star, cross, circle, diamond, square & triangle. After the child drags the shape into its matching “hole” an automated voice affirms the selection by stating the name of that shape. This method is fantastic because a student of any language will be introduced to the sound of the word in English without initially knowing any English and without having to spell…yet. The child is rewarded with an animated balloon that floats across the screen when they successfully get all of the shapes in their correct holes. The next phase of the lesson is an application where the student clicks any shape from the 6 aforementioned shapes. Upon clicking, the shape will animate and then the shape’s word appears on the screen as the narrated voice states the shape once again. This phase builds on the previous one by introducing the spelling of the shape along with the sound which reinforces the child’s memory of what they have previously learned. The third part allows the child to scroll through either the picture of the shape or the name of the shape in separate lists until they come up with correctly matching columns. Upon success, the shape animates and the voice comes back to reinforce that the correct choice was made. The fourth phase is a matching game that utilizes what the child has learned in the previous sessions. The child turns over a card and attempts to match a picture of a shape to the shape’s word. All of these lessons end in a rewarding animated balloon whenever the child successfully accomplishes the task. The fifth phase uses the shapes learned to build a landscape out of the shapes. When the child clicks the shapes, they appear in the beach picture and make items come to life in the scene. The narrator then reinforces the sound of the shape’s word and it lights up. Finally the lesson ends with a letter spelling game. The child clicks any of the six shapes and then a jumble of letters comes on screen where the child must choose the correct spellings of each shape name. This part of the lesson brings together everything that has been learned and if the child has successfully accomplished each task will be able to identify, spell and say the name of the six shapes. The lesson is extremely simple but successful in teaching a student of any language the correct identification of six shapes in English. This site can be used by children of all ages or children of different learning abilities. I recommend this site as a successful tool in educating children about shapes and the correct spelling of shapes.
By:Krista Robinson
For Blog One I evaluated the Shapes Games section of the PBS website. There are about thirty different games related to shapes, based off of various daytime PBS children’s shows. The page is organized from easy to difficult going down the page. There is a variety of different games that practice an assortment of skills. Some of the easier games include simple shape recognition, where the goal is to sort the shapes into different groups, or match the shape with a similar shape. The medium style games test skills that have more to do with comparing shapes that are different from others and recognizing and predicting patterns. The more difficult include fractions, patterns, and point of view activities. Depending on the age of the student and how advanced they are in their reading skills and mathematic skills this could be a very useful and educational website. Even though this website would not help with reading, writing, or spelling of shapes, like I had hoped, I believe it could be well used as a mathematics tool. I would definitely encourage my English speaking students to use this website as a fun way to practice math, but I don’t believe an ESL would find it beneficial to learn how to spell shape words.
2D Geometric Shapes
By:Caroline Lamb
The Nick Jr. sight offers a large variety of games for students dealing with geometric shapes in their section titled, “Numbers & Shapes!” Because the channel, Nick Jr., is geared toward the littler crowd, ages 3-7, this website has great games and resources for younger elementary aged students (Pre-K - 2nd). But even more than that, because the website’s vocabulary is so basic, it would be a fantastic resource for any student, still in young grades to meet the maturity level of the website, who is an English-Language-Learner and is struggling to master the vocabulary of this unit. One game for example, “Find the Shapes,” I really think would be a great educational resource for ELL’s because of the broken down and basic nature of the game. It verbally states the directions allowed, has you do the activity, then tells you the name of the shape you found. This is particularly helpful if you are trying to model proper pronunciation for the ELL. However, the downside is, it does not show you the vocabulary word, it only says it, so the student is getting no practice in the actual textual recognition or in textual phoneme pronunciation. Overall, I think this site is a good way to have students of all skill levels practice their vocabulary and build a knowledge foundation, while being in a low pressure, low stress situation. It would be an easy activity for students to do during spare time. The site is easy to navigate, and because it is run by Nick Jr., it seems relatively safe for little ones to explore on their own. Simply set the child down with some headphones and they will be set to learn the vocabulary, such as hexagon, square etc., in a well modeled verbal way, and in several of the games, written as well. The students will not only be able to expand their knowledge on the shape vocabulary, but they will be able to practice reading skills, and phonetic awareness, all of which are essential in the early elementary classroom. And because the sight offers 41 game options in the “Numbers and Shapes” section, the individual interests of your students will be met by allowing them to pick a games that interests them personally. Overall, this is a good and educational website for teachers, but only for students in the young grades. The maturity level of the website would be far too low for any student in or above 3rd grade.
No comments:
Post a Comment