NEW RESOURCE! Find Ten

What an amazing resource! I am an elementary level EFL teacher and I used the resource today as a spelling activity. My class is organized into teams, so I had each team choose a student to come to the board and try to correctly identify their 10 spelling words for the week. I challenged them by having a 30 second countdown timer.

From experiences in class today, I have a suggestion: would it be possible to include a ‘reset’ button to restart the activity, putting the words in squares at random? Today, I just opened 8 tabs (1 for each group) and preloaded the words so that each group had a slightly different word arrangement.

Again, this is another excellent resource on your site. I have also used your Word Mix and Word Magnet tools in my classes. Your resources are more than generous.

Hello Thaddeus,

Thank you very much for your kind and constructive feedback. I am really pleased that you are finding the new resource to be helpful in your teaching. Hopefully other teachers will be inspired by the way in which you have used the resource in your lesson and decide to do the same.

A ‘Reset’ button is a very good idea – I will see what I can do and update the resource as soon as possible.

Thank you once again for your feedback – it is much appreciated,

David

PS – Out of interest, were you able to use the ’save’ function to store your activity for future use?

UPDATE: In response to the feedback from Thaddeus, a ‘Reset’ button has now been added to the resource, David.

Thank you very much for adding the ‘reset’ function.

Yeah, I was actually really surprised at how simple the text input structure was to understand. Once I saved the text for the first game that I made, I was able to go ahead and write out several other games within the text file by modeling the original ordering structure.

It’s a pleasure… the ‘Reset’ button was a good idea and it was easy to add.

The text structure is very simple and, as you say, possibly easier than using the resource itself. It is the title, followed by ten correct answers and then five incorrect answers – all separated by commas:

Title, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, I, I, I, I, I

Hopefully the ‘copy and paste’ method of saving activities will be easy for teachers. It is also secure, requires no uploading/downloading from the internet and makes it easy to share activities with colleagues. A single Word document could contain thousands of different activities, all categorised and organised as best suits the teacher.

The format is hopefully easy enough to allow students to create their own activities too, perhaps even as a homework task.

Thanks again for your comments,

David.

I love this one! BUT i´m from sweden so i would love it even more if I could use the scandinavian letters å, ä and ö!

(You´ve helped me once with the “wordmagnets resource”- thanks again)

Hello again Anna,

Thank you for your comments and also for the great videos you have made about the resources: Link to Anna’s Blog.

The resource has been updated and non-English characters should now display without a problem.

Thanks again for writing about the site on your blog – I hope that you find the resources to be useful,

David

What can i say?! YOU ARE GREAT!!
Thank you so much! Now i can do video about “Find ten”

Thanks Anna – I look forward to seeing the video.

Thanks again for your feedback,

David

I love the idea – thanks. any chance we could have some way of including maths symbols – for exacmple x squared. Or indicies? Or fractions? I know this is more complicated but it would be really helpful. thank you very much.

Thanks Jonesy… I’m not sure how I would add the mathematical symbols you mention…

As an experiment, would it be possible to insert the symbols into a Word document and then copy and paste them across to the resource?

If not, perhaps other visitors to the site may know of a solution to this problem and add a comment,

David

Love the resource. Can add basic fractions and indices using the character map or keyboard short cuts ‘alt + 0178′ for example.
Brilliant starter activity – thank you.

Thanks Bob – I am pleased that you are finding the resource to be useful,

David

Used this with students for first time today – they loved it! Just had to load up one I’d made over the weekend and had it on IWB when they walked in. Didn’t even have to explain what to do. Simply brilliant.

That’s great news Bob – I am really grateful for your feedback and pleased that your students enjoyed using the resource.

It is also good that you found the ’save’ feature to be helpful. The idea is that teachers can easily create many different activities to share with colleagues and use again and again. Students could also be given the task of creating activities – perhaps as a homework task.

Thanks again for your feedback – much appreciated,

David

This looks like yet another triptico winner! Is there any chance of adding a countdown/stopwatch timer to this activity – it would really build the tension!

Magnificent and very easy to use! I’m a Primary school teacher in Australia and this will come in very handy

Thanks Lisa – I am pleased that you like the resource…

Hope it is useful,

David

Thanks Jez,

I will look into adding a timer to the resource…

Hope that you find the resource to be useful. Please continue to post any feedback you have – it is much appreciated,

David

Great resource! Very simple to use. I am going to share it with my staff at a meeting tomorrow.

Thanks Lyn – I hope that the resource will be useful.

If you have any further feedback or questions then please let me know – either by posting a comment or by using the contact form on this site.

Thanks again, David

Your website is a never ending source for new lesson ideas!
This resource is great as are the others. Thanks a lot!
Just two ideas:
- It would be great if you could write a bit more into the boxes (sentences). Mine were too long
- Sometimes I don’t find 10 correct answers but only 8. Then I can’t use this great ressource.

Thanks Melanie – I am really pleased that you are finding the resources to be useful in your teaching.

I will try to make time to review this resource and see if I can make any improvements to address the issues you have raised. Thanks again for taking the time to post on the site – your feedback is really appreciated, David.

Great resource.
Would it be possible to publish the exercises on the Internet, too?

Thanks Heidi – I hope that you find the resource to be useful…

I am not sure what you mean by ‘publishing exercises on the internet’… let me know and I will try to help,

David

Cracking resource!!! I love it – Bob showed me it today and I can’t wait to use it with my class!

Brilliant resource! Bob showed me it and I really like it! I can’t wait to try it with my class – maybe Heidi means it would be good if people had a place to share their created top tens!

Great work – thanks a lot!

Another great resource, so many uses. If I didn’t have ten correct answers, I used the word Blank and just clicked on the blanks before the start of the actvity, it works really well.

Thanks Anita – I am pleased that you like the resource…

Adding the word ‘Blank’ is also a good idea for activities with less than ten correct answers – it means teachers can quickly identify squares which will not be used and remove them at the start of the game.

Thanks for sharing this tip with other visitors to the site,

David

David — Thank you again! I am gathering resources for our teachers for the upcoming school year, and found you had added a few gems for us! Your generosity of time is quite appreciated.

Thanks Denise,

I hope that the teachers in your school find the resources to be helpful – please comment again if you have any feedback, questions or ideas.

Thanks again,

David

[...] Find 10, perhaps as a starter. This allows you to show 15 statements, 5 of which are incorrect, students [...]