I am hooked on the International Reading Association site for this amazing free online cube creator and want to spread the news! This great resource helps our students to break down and comprehend books that they are reading and it can easily link to many common core standards. I love that it is interactive and computer based to engage kids and you can print planning sheets and your cube for some fun rolling activities.
WHY I LOVE IT:
The interactive Cube Creator offers four ‘cubes’:
Bio Cube: Develop an outline of a person whose biography or autobiography they have just read with prompts to describe a person’s significance, background, and personality.
Mystery Cube: Sort out clues in the mystery genre and identify mystery elements ( setting, clues and crime), practice using vocabulary and sort and summarize information.
Story Cube: Summarise the key elements in a story, including character, setting, conflict, resolution, and theme.
Create-Your-Own Cube: This allows the user to generate their own questions or topics by typing in the questions and saving the file.
HOW DO I USE IT?
This is the PERFECT resource to use if you are trying to be curriculum related…. just grab your child’s books from their curriculum and start analysing and summarising. It is great for comprehension and other receptive language skills and you can adapt your expressive language goals to the formulation of ideas and answering the questions. If you print out the planning sheets you can use them for language groups. The student’s can write their answers on paper first, then transfer them to the computer.
WHERE TO FIND IT
Click the link here to be redirected to the International Reading Association site to start your fun!
This is awesome and timely, since I’m super into cubes these days and also just blogged about making letter dice from wooden cubes found at a discount store! (http://speechiespeaks.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/on-the-roll-phonological-awareness-therapy-idea/)
Thanks for the link; I’ve already had a play around and love it.