Friday 30 November 2012

Help needed with my colours!


Mmm, probably shouldn't admit it but I am red-green colour blind which always makes working with colours a challenging feat for me! And with working on Operation Lucy there's a lot of work to do with colours… all the pictures have to be coloured in. Not my favourite task either, but I know you have some really keen color-inners in your classes so I've linked below to a number of black and white drawings below which need colouring… whilst you're waiting for Operation to Lucy to come out please feel free to use the drawings as a resource for your class… I'd really love to see them too as they will give me some ideas on colours to use… so email them over and add a caption to what you think is happening in each picture…







What's happening 2





What's happening 3








I've also included some colored drawings that I recently finished… let me know what you think!

Best wishes

Tim



Monday 5 November 2012

No fee, no subscription for 100s of resources...

One of the findings from my recent survey was that some teachers said that Roy had gone pre-paid/subscription… this concerned me somewhat as it was quite a generalization… the bulk of Roy is still free (more than 95% of the resources in fact).

No doubt, this is an impact of adding the 5 x paid-for software elements to the site from 2009 and embedding some of the software games in amongst the free reading games. I'm thinking I might label them as demos but still it's good for everyone to see what the paid-for games are like.

Anywhoo, I'm writing this article as a) I wanted to remind everyone about the free content which amounts to hundreds of resources (check out our sitemap) and b) re-state that selling the software is very important as it enables me to continue development of the site: free elements + paid for elements.

If you're reading this and thinking you haven't tried the software yet then please click the following links so that you can download and install the trial versions… you get to try it, evaluate it and if you buy the software then you're not just getting a valuable tool that you can use to teach literacy but you're also supporting the free stuff and Roy's future! Surely that's a win win...

Here you go...

Long Vowel Phonemes: Use the long vowels phoneme software to support the teaching of a-e, aw, ay, ea, ee, er, ew, ir, oo, and or (plus more)... software comes with two activities, lesson plans, plus a whole heap of printable resources... all designed so that you minimize your preparation time...  INSTALL NOW

Consonant Blends: This time we're helping little Mo (Roy's little cousin) in her secret garden where she is trying to blend and segment CVCC words... in this way she's learning how to code and decode words.... again, packed with time-saving resources... READ MORE & INSTALL NOW

 Tricky Words: Help Zara find all her space tricky words (those words that cannot be decoded using phonics). Comes with more than 300 words that can be customized per game... setup words per student for them to find and learn. READ MORE & INSTALL NOW


Happy to answer any questions you have about the above. Just email me: tim@roythezebra.com. Or if there are any ways that you'd like to see the software improved then I'd be really interested to hear that too.

Again, another way of visiting all the free content is to have a look at the site map… you can see the almost 600 pages of content that exists on www.roythezebra.com ; )