I need some insight from any of you who use Education.com, a suggested site from the Daily Cafe resources, for games. I purchased access for $59.94 and now it looks like all I got for my money is WORKSHEETS:fearful: Anyone with experience with this site, can you help me? I was hoping for access to games…
I have never used it, but just went to the site. They show that they have games–if you can’t see them, I’d contact their customer service.
I use it and I have used games and worksheets. I paid the same amount. Not sure why you can search or select games. Good Luck getting to the bottom of it.
Hi Peggy,
The article I found on the Daily CAFE links to the game section of education.com and there it says there are 38 games. I do see that the website has many, many worksheets, and that is definitely not the intent of the connection from The Daily CAFE to that site. When I go directly to education.com and select “games” from the top bar it tells me there are 368 games. When I filter to reading and writing it tells me there are 132.
Thank you for looking into this more and questioning as our intent would never be to lead you to a site that only provides worksheets when our message is to provide students with authentic application and practice of reading, writing, and math skills.
It took awhile for their tech support to get back to me, but the problem has been resolved. I paid $60 dollars for a premium membership which gives me unlimited access for my students to play the games. The basic membership limits the number of times the students can play, but gives full access to unlimited worksheets. I took the helpful advice from all of you to get to the bottom of it-thanks!
Yay!! Glad to hear it’s all solved now–That’s the most important piece :). Hope your kids enjoy the games.
S
I noticed that someone was “afraid” to use the worksheets on Education.com, and some of the comments reiterated the fact that the Sisters want students to have “authentic” activities.
I see the word "authentic’ used a lot when I read about teaching reading, and am curious to know what it means for sure. I thought it meant “actually reading,” but games aren’t necessarily “actually reading,” and they are promoted.
Can anyone clarify the use of the term, "authentic?"
Also wondering if worksheets are ever appropriate - there are many out there for practicing sight words - what make them less valuable than building the words with magnetic letters, for example, which we know IS valuable?
To clarify, I was fearful I had paid to have access to more worksheets not of worksheets themselves;)
Authentic is a word we use often these days in education. From professional resources I’ve read (including the Sisters) and in my teaching, this is what I believe it to mean:
Authentic literature is material written for the joy of the story, not to fit a prescribed phonics “rule” or strategy. When published authors write stories, they certainly attend to their audience and the methods in writing stories (story elements, problem/solution, etc), so we can use these “authentic” texts to teach those strategies students need to develop an appreciation for and enjoyment of reading for pleasure. We are so lucky to be teaching in the era of publishers and authors who are developing to write both fiction and expository texts with all the story elements/expository text guidelines at various reading levels for all our readers.
Authentic writing is writing when students write about either true (authentic) events from their lives/experiences-- OR ideas from their imagination that follow story structure. Contrast that to always writing about a given prompt. Are there times for prompts? Certainly, but not as the “rule”.
Worksheets can be helpful for practice–BUT, what we have to watch out for is that the “cuteness” factor doesn’t take over what we’re trying to teach. Also, we don’t want to use worksheets that “drill and kill”–50 math problems when 10 would show if kids have understanding, or 20 words to look up in the dictionary when a class discussion of the words will give more understanding. `
I think, like all of our teaching, we need to consider the best way for our children to learn what we want to teach them. Thinking, talking and sharing–either orally or through writing–seem to be the most authentic .
Thanks for the ideas. It seemed to me that some of the worksheets that are specifically for sight words are helpful, just as practice writing and recognizing the words. We also look for the words in the books we are reading, and we do “build” the words, but I had also always had the kiddos use various “worksheet-type papers” to practice writing the words (they need handwriting practice also).
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