Tell us about an unexpected outcome from having used this kit.
The kit has become part of our independent activities at reading time.
“A great resource for a junior room. Would have been better without capital letters but was a good learning tool for the tamariki - matching upcase and lowercase.”
“My students absolutely loved this resource! They enjoyed counting up each letter and seeing which letter we had the most of and spelling different words!
Such an open ended resource, the students enjoyed making up their own games and teaching their peers.”
Tell us about an unexpected outcome from having used this kit.
They have used the tiles to make words, such as their names and other high frequency words.
“I did have concerns around the tiles being capital letters as we focus on lower case letters, so the students were challenged to re-write the words they fished up with the tiles, to lower case on paper. The tiles were fantastic to use alongside our money unit as well. Being active and hands on with their learning (fishing for letters) created a fun atmosphere.”
“Our class loved the tiles and we had so much awesome learning from it! We added a dollar value to each tile and the food it represented. We used the fishing rods to 'shop' and then add up how much our shop cost us. Some older children made us little bags out of paper that we could use as shopping bags. Great fun and great learning. Thank you!”
Tell us about an unexpected outcome from having used this kit.
The children have improved with identifying letters and their sounds, as they need to do this to find the whole set. Big community buy in for my class to make sure that we had lots and lots of tiles. Even though we received 150 we did not get the full set
“My kids loved working with the tiles and making sure that we have the whole sets.”
“My class of new entrant children found the Countdown tiles highly engaging. But as an educator it was disappointing that they only showed capital letters. Lowercase letters are taught to children first and are used most commonly. I did not use the titles for any word making or spelling. Especially, as children are first learning their alphabet it would be confusing for them to use capital in the middle of words.”
Tell us about an unexpected outcome from having used this kit.
Oral language that has come from the pictures as they discuss the fruit or vegetable. They say what it is, or if they like it or not, how they like to eat it.
“My Children love fishing for the letters and playing bingo, we haven't yet managed to do anything else but we do love it.”
