During Ethan's academic games session, he played two rounds of a word building bingo game called Wingo. The game has the excitement of Bingo, the fun and feel of Dominoes and when you put them together...you’ve got W-I-N-G-O! This game is a great way to practice phonics skills in a fun environment. Players spin the spinner to select a color, choose a matching domino, and then try to form a word, matching the letters on the domino to the letters on their card. The first player to complete one row of words shouts “Wingo.” and wins the round. Ethan had an excellent time playing Wingo and further strengthening and building his phonics skills.
Ethan began his session practicing his reading and math skills on his Sumdog account. Then we played a contraction game to practice which words make each specific contractions.
Ethan began his session by playing a board game called Reading Skills Review: Time Machine. In the game, players stumble upon a time machine and use their reading skills to travel through time. Each player is to make their way around the board, reading and answering leveled story cards that propel them from prehistoric times to the distant future. The story cards cover a variety of reading skills including: main idea, context clues, read for detail, find cause and effect, form contractions, find synonyms and more. The questioning also covers several aspects of Bloom's Taxonomy. Ethan loved playing the game and we were able to have several mini-lessons based around questions that he had difficulty answering. Ethan had difficulty with contractions - so we decided to focus on some contraction games next week. After the reading game, I introduced Ethan to Hangman. Hangman is a wonderful game that helps students examine the different letter patterns of words. We specifically focused on vowels, consonants, blends, and popular letters. Ethan did an excellent job with Hangman and really enjoyed guess the words.
Gwendolyn began her session by playing a board game called Reading Skills Review: Time Machine. In the game, players stumble upon a time machine and use their reading skills to travel through time. Each player is to make their way around the board, reading and answering leveled story cards that propel them from prehistoric times to the distant future. The story cards cover a variety of reading skills including: main idea, context clues, read for detail, find cause and effect, form contractions, find synonyms and more. The questioning also covers several aspects of Bloom's Taxonomy. Gwendolyn loved playing the game and we were able to have several mini-lessons based around questions that she had difficulty answering. After the game, we played a version of Hangman where the words in question had to include blends and digraphs. Hangman is a wonderful game that not only helps students examine the letter patterns of the word but also encourages them to use context clues to identify words that might fit into a sentence when playing with sentences. Gwendolyn did an excellent job with Hangman and really enjoyed both creating and guessing.
For Ethan's academic games session today, we played Getting the Main Idea: Around the World. In this game, players make their way around the world, stopping to sightsee in such far-off places as Paris, Istanbul and Beijing. At every stop, a story card asks them to read a leveled passage and choose the main idea from multiple answers. The first player to go around the world and reach the finish wins! Ethan loved playing the game and did exceptionally well reading and answering the comprehension passages. He was the first player to get around the world and was extremely happy to win the game. At the end of the session, we had five minutes left, so Ethan logged on to Sumdog and played two math games. The first game that he played, he was able to score the second highest in the school and ahead of his brother - which was a huge accomplishment for him!!
Ethan played Tens Go Fish and Addition War during his session today. Both games focus on building addition facts. Ethan did extremely well in both games and was able to win which made him even happier!
Ethan was so excited about the reading we did earlier in the day, that he wanted to begin his session listening to The Monster Under My Bed. After listening to the online story, we had a great comprehension discussion. Following the reading activity, Ethan and I played Tens Go Fish. The game is played to help strengthen the compliments of ten knowledge. This game is particularly good for Ethan because it he needs repetition with compliments of ten. The Go Fish aspect of the game falls under algebraic thinking because it deals with a missing number. We were able to complete an entire game and Ethan absolutely loved it!
During Ethan's Academic Games session we played What's My Number. This game encourages analytical thinking about number relationships. Ethan really liked the interactive nature of the game board because he was able to flick down numbers on it after answering mathematical questions about the numbers. The object of the game is to best predict your opponent's number. The board can also be used for visual demonstration of number patterns, operations, counting, finding missing numbers, and greater than/less than concepts. Includes instructions and activity guide. Ethan did extremely well with the game and was able to develop a strategy that enabled him to find the correct number (1-50) by asking only 5 questions. In addition to strategy, Ethan worked on concepts like greater than, less than, equal to, place value, rows and columns. He really enjoyed the game and asked if we could play it again next week!
