When a child is half way through Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps, you can now download a letter from their monster.

In the letter, the monster thanks the child for helping it on its reading journey. It also encourages the player to complete the rest of the Teach Your Monster to Read games so it can keep learning its letters and sounds.

Just log into your account, find the player’s name and click the ‘Monster letter’ link to download and print the letter.

We’d like to hear what parents think of this new feature. Just send us an email to [email protected] or make a comment in the box below.

Share your monster letters online – we’d love to see them!

www.facbook.com/teachyourmonstertoread

www.twitter.com/monsterscanread

Phonics phones can help students pay attention to the sounds and words they are saying. The phone amplifies the sounds the student says into them and works well for one to one work or small group exercises.

Class Room DIY blog shows you how to make your own DIY phonics phone:

http://www.classroomdiy.com/2012/05/diy-phonics-phones.html

We’re pleased to announce that the third Teach Your Monster to Read game will launch on June 4th 2015. We cannot wait to share the game with our players!

Entitled ‘Champion Reader’, this game will find the monsters in a new universe full of fascinating planets to explore and curious new characters to meet. These include the wise woman Jessica, who is the monsters’ friend and guide, the horrible green Goblin Prince who turns people into blocks of ice, and Mrs Jumble and Mrs Jangle, the two top-hatted creatures who have lost their marbles!

Continue the reading adventure with Teach Your Monster to Read: Champion Reader

Explore different ways of representing the same sound
Explore alternative ways of sounding out the same letters
Read more tricky words and play more blending and segmenting games
Read for purpose with magical little books
The computer version is 100% free, forever.

Teach Your Monster to Read 3: Champion Reader complements all synthetic phonics programmes used in schools.

For a more details about the educational content of Champion Reader, please read our game by game comparison.

To play Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps or Teach Your Monster to Read: Fun With Words then log into your account or sign up here: www.teachyourmonstertoread.com

This phonics activity can be created using toys or things you find in the home or classroom. Write down the phonemes on a piece of paper that you’d like your child to practise. Ask them to put each object starting with the same phoneme into the corresponding basket.

Take a look on the Imagination Tree website for detailed way to set this activity up:

http://theimaginationtree.com/2014/03/phonics-activity-sorting-baskets.htm

We’ve been improving the Teach Your Monster to Read website to make it more useful for teachers and students. Here are some of the upgrades we’ve made this month:

Passwords:

You can now turn passwords off completely so children can log in using only their name. Just pop into your account settings to do this.
If you’re using auto-generated passwords, you can now choose to print out your passwords in capital or lowercase letters on password cards or in letters to parents.
Certificates, password cards and posters:

Password cards, certificates and posters can now be downloaded in bulk.
You can download posters and certificates for all your players, particular players or those in a group.
Progress reports:

Progress reports can now be downloaded for a whole group so you can compare the stats across a class.
Teacher to parent letter:

We have made sharing the game easier. Teachers can now easily edit a letter to parents. The letter contains login details for each of their students and can be printed in bulk.
We hope you find these new features useful – many of the changes have come out of conversations with our players.

Please get in touch if you have further suggestions, ideas or feedback about the website and game. We’d love to hear them!

The Teach Your Monster to Read team

Congratulations to Ashley Knight, the winner of the Teach Your Monster to Read Christmas colouring competition!

Ashley created the monster ‘Sprout’. Sprout wanted lots of books for Christmas – we think he’ll be happy with his book prize.

Here is Ashley with his winning picture.

The competition was judged by Teach Your Monster to Read illustrator Rich Wake,

Rich said:

“The winner for me is definitely Sprout by Ashley because I love the goggly eyes, pom-poms and glitter that have been added. Very creative and very Christmassy. Also the colouring in is really neat”.

Well done Ashley!

Here are some of the other fantastic entries into the competition. Thank you for sending through your monsters.

We’ve launched a fun and festive colouring in competition just in time for the holidays.

The winner will receive £50 of Usborne books.

How to enter.

Colour in this downloadable picture and email your entries to [email protected] by 31st December 2014.

Rich Wake, the wonderful illustrator for Teach Your Monster to Read will judge the entries. We’re looking for the most colourful designs!

For competition terms and conditions go to: www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/legals

The team at Teach Your Monster to Read would like to wish all our players (monsters) a very merry christmas!

This colourful phonics activity was found on Jenae’s www.icanteachmychild.com resource site.

This activity is about about sorting words that contain digraphs: /th/, /sh/and /ch/. It also includes decodable words like ‘that’ and ‘ship’ and tricky words like ‘the’ and ‘she’.

Find out how to crreate this phonics resource here at www.icanteachmychild.com

We’re asking teachers to join us for a 45 minute phone call where we’ll ask you a few questions about how you teach reading in school.

The research will help the Teach Your Monster to Read team to think about future developments and resources.

We’re giving £100 of Usborne books to those schools that can help us. If you are interested in joining this research project and have availability in January 2015 then email [email protected]

N.B. We’d also like to talk to teachers who do not currently use Teach Your Monster to Read in school so please pass on to any teachers who might like to help us with this research.

We’re proud to announce that Teach Your Monster to Read has reached 2 million game plays!

This is fantastic news for the Usborne Foundation because we know the game is helping more and more children learn to read.

Thank you to everyone who has played the game and we hope you’ll share this free online reading game with other parents and teachers.