Phonic Games and Zondle

From Zondle Newbie, to.. Big Smiles!

Really enjoying exploring Zondle and the more time I spend with it the more treasures I uncover.  Last year I had that rare treat of working across Key Stages 1 to 3, spending one day a week with students in a Year2/3 class.  One of the groups I worked with during the day had a Phonics and Spelling focussed session, if only I had known about Zondle then how much time I might have saved.

I am going to spend most of this post making a topic using Phase 1 and 2 phoneme/grapheme groups. I have made a number of resources already to support work with this cluster, both with students and as support material and template files to share with colleagues.  So forgive me as I play, think through a few aspects I want to share back at school and a few thoughts around CPD that might be needed to utilise this tool set or how they might be embedded not just as web based resources but also within classroom and IWB supported sessions.

Delving into the Quiz Builder

This morning I decided to investigate the more tab in the quiz builder tool, having watched some of the excellent video tutorials recommended by @ wayneholmes.  Amid the tools mentioned in the videos was "Zondle Builder," a tool that I thought Foundation and KS1 colleagues might find particularly exciting.  Zondle Builder currently in Beta, is a filtering tool to help quickly build phonic games and resources from an already populated database.  In the Builder, wordlists are organised initially, under these scheme headings as the first filter option, Jolly Phonics, Letters and Sounds, and High Frequency Words  (Dear Zondle would it be possible to include a filter for the so called "tricky words?").  This is the first time saver being able to identify with existing phonic programs in common use.  Items can be further filtered within each scheme by Phase (letters and Sounds), Word Set (High Frequency Words and Jolly Phonics).  So in two clicks I have been able to refine items very quickly,with further focus possible by refining word sets through other more specific filters, eg consonant and vowel sequencing.  Once filtered down to the specific word groups required, further tightening of the selection is possible by deselecting words from presented lists that I can exclude from my final quiz list.

On Getting Lost, and Learning from my Mistakes

I have to admit to getting a bit lost while trying to find the "Zondle Builder," but this was more to do with my "IKEA Man overzealousness" than Zondle itself...  Yet another if only... indeed if only I had rewatched the video, or waited another 30 seconds, the mist would have been cleared away.  Anyway, time wasn't wasted indeed I spent time exploring the contents of the more tab and created my first phonics quiz and games, in the process identifying a developmental task and key process I will need to revisit with colleagues, namely recording and saving audio for upload.  Anyway on with the post.

Here is my first game Phonic game SATPIN Quick Sand Bunny. 

zondle - games to support learning

This was created using an item from the more tab, the "Phonics- drag the letters to create graphemes that make up a word" question type

With the more tab open and my phoneme group "SATPIN" decided upon, I set about entering a list of all the Vowel consonant (VC) and consonant vowel consonant (CVC) words that I could think of using these phonemes.  These make up the question list to the left in the above screenshot.

Entering each word was achieved a phoneme at a time, selecting and clicking the phoneme keyboard (1), dragging the grapheme I needed from those listed in blue (2), before sequencing these on the "hangman type" space (3) by drag and drop.  On completing each word pressing the save question link added it to the quiz.  By repeating this process I created the word list for my quiz in between 10 and 15 minutes.  On returning to my topics, I was able to click on my quiz and select the game I wanted to use.

Sharing My Game

To share my game here I clicked the "embed this game in your site" link in the top right of the game window. There is a great video from Zondle explaining the process here.  However for class/school bloggers or VLE users rather than creating a web page, you will need to create the post or add a page element to house your game first.  After copying the code from the site as in the video, returning to your blog space or page element, you will need to view the page's HTML source.  Tools to do this are usually provided as a button option on the tool bar or as in blogger a tab.  With the HTML source/editor visible click into the text box, right click and select paste or holding down the control key and pressing the V key should paste the code where you chose to put it.

All VLEs and Blogging platforms are slightly different, so explanations here as within the video beyond the generic is difficult.  A little playing and mouse hovering will be necessary, perhaps even a delve into the help files might be useful in enabling you to find the tools you need.

Zondle Builder a Real Jewel

Moving on then it transpires that what I missed earlier was the floating "Zondle Builder" Button that appeared after I had clicked the More Tab.

Not quite as observant or sharp as I used to be maybe!

 Anyway clicking the Zondle Builder opens a page offering a 3 step process to making your phnonic or spelling game question.

In Step 1:  Select your quiestion type (how you would like the students to engage with your words.)
In Step 2: Use the filters to find and narrow down the word groups you would like to use and generate your word list.

Step 3: Press the add questions to topic button, a one step task that adds all words selected to the quiz/topic under creation.

Having explored the interface and with familiarity this was really quick to achieve.  From this again a number of games are now available to be played and shared.  As a treat for following my wittering this far, here is one of the game generated from the list above.



Variety is the Spice of Life

Thinking about using these activities, I can't see myself simply wanting to embed these phonic zondles in a web page, blog post or VLE and hoping the students will want to visit them.  As games they will stand alone for consolidation and practice, but would be even even more effective used as integral parts of Phonic sessions.


I had my word list prepared and in class will no doubt have a range of activities and tasks to use with the students.  Some of these will be whole class, small group or individual tasks.  Some will be practial, physical and because we are talking about sounds... heavily based in speaking and listening.  The tasks could involve physical objects, use of worksheets, the use of look and say with flash cards but having a particular personal vent towards embedding and using ICTs, I would also include the use of "multimodal" tasks, using dry wipe whiteboards as we work as a class around our IWB.  These activities would include

• Phonic photosets and slideshows using images from the web, to represent words and phonemes.  
• Odd one out shows using powerpoint slides and photograph, or present my phonemes in a variety of font styles to encourage recognition of the letter shape in a variety of forms.  
• Rub and reveal and white on white activities having students predict which of our words letters will appear.  How do we know?
• Using a set of "flash based" editable dice set up in my Notebook, to randomly generate graphemes, challenging students to spell words using them before collecting ideas sounding them out and reading these through using sound buttons.  

My Zondles would be interspersed among other tasks in support of these activities, accessed by opening live via links from my notebook or slideshows via the Zondle site, school VLE or class blog, spaces where the students (and parents/carers) know they can be visited for follow up at home, and hopefully building on the students enthusiasm from my class sessions. Zondle games can also be set as "competitions," so perhaps I could differentiate between the games I want to use in class and those I want the students to engage with outside of classroom time.  Throughout the phase or unit of work my quiz is developed around I could have a number of games visible using the "competition" perhaps offering prizes rewards to encourage engagement.

ICT in the Early Years

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ICT in the Early Years

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Thanks to Anthony Evans for his recent post pointing to and sharing this inspirational web space. ICT in the Early Years is a fantastic resource, that exemplifies current practice at the Homerton Children's centre, in Cambridgeshire.

There is much to learn from a visit to this space for all of us about how ICTs can be exploited and embedded in support of daily classroom life. Throughout the space it is evident that ICTs do not stand alone here, but are viewed and used as part of a wider social and physical toolset to support and mediate the learning experiences of students and the pedagogy and practice of practitioners. Computers form part of roleplay areas, Cameras are used by students and professionals to capture activities, points of interest as well as to evidence, share and support review of learning. Software tools are carefully chosen to contextualise learning within real life situations for students, and utilised to create and share learning stories and colate and present assessment for learning materials within digital portfolios. Throughout the site materials developed are also offered for download and use in CPD.

The planning area of the site is a real boon as Early Years and Foundation Stage Principles are used to illustrate and exemplify potential uses for ICT tools. From my point of view as an ICT subject leader, with little to no foundation experience this is an extremely valuable resource. One that I can share with colleagues in school and that will help inform potential directions for ICT investment and development, support audit of current practice and aid as a starting point for planning next steps in our professional learning. Thanks to all at the Homerton Children's Centre involved in the development and sharing of this fantastic resource.

Storyphones... The Listening Station Evolves

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StoryPhones - The complete MP3 audio system for delivering audio resources in primary schools and nurseries

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Thanks to Phil King from Ameeca, home of Storyphones for his visit today and providing update information on recent developments at the Storyphones Website. A reciprocal visit gave an opportunity to explore through video how colleagues are using these tools first hand, to support speaking and listening, MFL and outdoor learning. From a Key Stage 2 perspective these also offered some interesting opportunities for supporting differentiation and inclusion. Why not take a swing by and check out what the tool has to offer, and perhaps what my earlier excitement was about. Really hoping I can find the space in a buzy New Year to take a first hand look at BETT this year.

Diwali Resources from iBoard

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i-board Divali resource link update

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The resources created and presented by iBoard are always a treat and delight to use with students. This month's free feature has been no exception. I have had a number blog visitors and colleagues in and around school looking for resources and materials to use in supporting work on Diwali and advised them to check these out. Have fun.

Catapult Chicken And Talking For Reasoning

I was playing on the iboard site tonight and came across this brilliant activity in the maths trial Pack. First of all the name appealed, but then came the visuals. Picture three chickens, a stack of weights and a catapult! What to do? What to do? A serious Homer Moment arose, but with an inevitable outcome. As I expect any self respecting student would do, I put as many weights as possible on the trap door, loosed these on the catapult and then sat back as each chicken was thrust skyward beyond their roosts before, slowly drifting back to mother earth assisted by a parachute.

Putting aside for a moment the humour and obvious fun I had, my initial free and semi structured play engaged me in a series of trial and refinement processes, as I visually evaluated the effect that the simulated masses had on the catapult and its aility to raise the chickens to their roosts. Further play and I found myself estimating what masses would be needed to lift each of the three different chickens to various levels on the tree and this in itself became a bit of an art.

Devised as a tool to support problem solving in context with year 1 students (5-6yrs), "Catapult Chicken" is part of iBoard's developing tool kit to support the Primary Mathematics Framework in Foundation and Key Satge One. As with other tools developed by the team, beyond its surface entertainment value is a well thought out in, to solving problems with inbuilt space for teacher and student creativity, and oppportunities to extend the face value tasks through "talk for reasoning" and estimation.

• How could we arange the chickens largest to smallest, in the branches?
• How could we do this from top to bottom, or bottom to top?
• How many weights might we need to boost the largest chilcken up to the middle branch?
• What would need to happen if...? we wanted to get the large chicken to the top branch?
• Can we order the chickens largest to smallest, bottom to top?

I like the possibilities presented by the game to differentiate activities iteratively through variation in the complexity of language use, while allowing visual modelling and discussion to take place around a shared text as we think and begin reasoning together.

The activity besides being really good fun, would work realy well with students working in pairs or individually during "give and go" main sessions interspersed with mini plenaries that followed on from free play. Here the children could also discuss and devise problems and challenges for the class to work on, with students sharing solutions on the IWB and explaining processes or giving reasons for their choices. I can also imagine some of the students in my current maths group enjoying the use of this tool to support modelled reasoning and estimation tasks in plenary sessions or as an introductory thinking activity and starting point for a puzzles and problems sessions. The environment I would suggest is one that in developing inclusion strategies, and thinking about what the learner needs is as applicable to the stage of development as it is to age. Perhaps I am only 7 at heart rather than a multiple of... but I loved it!

A Christmas present From iBoard

I used this set of resources primarily with students in Year 1 last year, though some of our older students also enjoyed playing with this fantastic collection of object based flash tools from the inspirational iBoard Team, at Electronic Blackboard.

Resources include

• Christmas Shape and Space Activities
• Getting ready for Christmas: (label and wrapping paper makers, dress up Santa, and mend or even "supe up"his sleigh, being among the tools available here)
• Christmas Writing: (drag and Drop Writing frames for letters and so on)
• and a collection of Christmas Shopping activities

There are 19 activities in all available to use free here, the students who used them loved the tools, I hope you do too, and that your experiences encourage you to explore further the fantastic Foundation and Key Stage One focussed tools they develop.

Animating Discussions in the Foundation Stage

Much early language work in the primary school is emergent, using negotiation to build on existing day to day experience and vocabulary from home to extend and develop language use through student/teacher talk. As KS 1 and 2 teachers we have much to learn from our colleagues in the foundation stage around this issue. I was working in with a Reception class the other day, quite an experience for me, and one from which I took a great deal. Previous experiences had involved using BeeBots, to talk about numbers and counting through numberline games, but today I felt adventurous and took along my laptop and a digi blue. I had decided to make a short animated movie to be called, "The House that Moth Class Built." I had decided early that the technology would not be the focus of the activity, but rather small group social activity, and language development around prepositions.

I set up the camera and laptop on a group table, with a duplo base and asked the children to help me find the construction kit I needed to work with. We began by my modelling how we were going to build a magical house, that would look like it had built itself, using the digi blue and placing bricks before shooting 5 frames at a time, inbetween each brick. We talked about how we would need to take turns, and after making one short film we watched it together. They seemed fairly impressed. One chap who had been watching me shoot the frames asked if he could do that bit, and was asked if he could count to 5, he assured me he could and so he bought himself a job. The other children became instruction followers, going off to find bricks of described colours, and then placing them on the board, beside, next to, ontop of, behind, inside the shapes and bricks as we went, and when we had placed our bricks, my new colleague the cameraman clicked and counted his 5 clicks. When we had finished, I exported the animation clip, and we watched it together. As you can probably imagine they were very excited, and wanted to share straight away what they had done. Unfortunately it was now playtime, and we had to tidy away... There is another problem, taking apart and putting away something you have just made.. We were Ok though because we had a picture not only of the final model on the laptop, but actually how it had been made step by step.

Over playtime, I imported the film into Movie Maker, and saved it as a wmv file, and after break we watched the film together. The House that Moths Built, went down a storm, but what was most important for me from this experience, was not that the children were learning how to make an animated film, it was the discussion and potential for language development and social play which evolved as we made it. I was very much in the drivers seat (well for most of the time), directing and supporting student actions as they identified bricks of a particular colour, and as they followed simple instructions using everyday prepositions to guide the placement of bricks, but as the activity developed I began to realise also the emergent mathematical development possibilities that were arising from one to one corresponding mouse clicks, and patterns of turn taking, the possibility for perhaps encouraging through structured play, the students to develop repeating patterns, of colour and shape, using pegboards and coloured pegs, or perhaps how these might be used in video mode to tell stories during imaginary play, or timelapse scenes with growing seeds, or during sequencing activities such as dressing a teddy bear or doll. Could we use this with younger students to make and tell simple stories using toys such as playmobile, or duplo. What if the class had its own digi blue, and children were able to use it to capture images of their completed projects, to be used perhaps in a class blog, devoloped by their teacher or nursery nurse acting as scribe, with children using talk to tell the story behind the image, while in the process seeing their words appear in print. Making this connection surely is a key to helping students understand why we write. This type of activity seems to me to have alsorts of possibilities that might be used to support emergent discussion and enable children to see the link between these three semiotic modes, graphics, words as symbols and talk. I have no early years or foundation stage experience to speak of beyond 3 or 4 years teaching in Year 1, so maybe my imagination is just running away with me again, I realise also that variety is the spice of life, and we would not want to be using these tools all the time, but I would love to hear what early years colleagues think, or are doing with video and digital photography, and how practical they feel they are. Unfortunately some of the students involved in this activity do not have digital permissions and appeared in shot, so I have not been able to upload and share this video, or any of the photographs taken during the session. Hopefully we will have a chance to share these in a school assembly though, before I have to delete them in line with our school policy.