Who is The Shopkeeper?
Scariness 1 Speed 3 Special Powers 2 Size 7 Appetite 5
At the end of each level your monster meets a very friendly shopkeeper. This shopkeeper offers the monster a chance to buy some goodies with the stars he has collected on his journey. This part of the game is one of the monster’s favourites!
The shopkeeper sells all kinds of equipment, food and clothing, from bright yellow wings, to a bucket and spade, a new brown belt or a large top hat. The monster can only purchase items that he can afford so he must choose wisely or save his stars for the next journey.
Happy shopping!
Click on this link for more information about Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun with Words.
Who are The Trickies?
Scariness 3 Speed 10 Special Powers 7 Size 4 Appetite 2
The Trickies are the speediest characters in the new Teach Your Monster to Read game. They appear in the villages and along the journey and pop up out of nowhere and they don’t stay still for long!
Your monster is excited if he finds a Tricky as one of the main aims of the game is to collect them all.
The Trickies each carry a tricky word, such as: he, she, no, go, have, like. They jump into sentences when the monster comes near them. The monster must practice the Trickie’s sentence 3 times to get the tricky word right. It’s hard work, but once the monster has practised the sentence the Trickie becomes the monster’s friend and stays with him until the end of the game
The Trickies love it when your monster gets the words right and are really excited to be reunited with all their Tricky friends!
Click on this link for more information about Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun with Words.
Down on the farm, the ducks have waddled out of the pond and are looking a bit lost.
This new game is a twist on the early Sheep game from Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps. The aim of this game is to listen to the sound (phoneme), then put all the ducks in the right pond.
But beware, if you get the sound wrong then all the ducks leave the pond and you’ll have to round them up again!
Find out more about the new game Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun With Words
What is The Hungry Word Beast?
Scariness 5 Speed 2 Special Powers 8 Size 9 Appetite 10
The Hungry Word Beast is Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun With Word’s biggest character – she is ten times the size of the monster! She is orange with a very large yellow mouth. Her appetite is huge and she loves to eat words for breakfast, lunch and dinner – but only the correct words.
She makes a lot of noise while eating and if a word isn’t right, she’ll spit it out in disgust! Bleeurrgghhh!
The Hungry Word Beast appears at the end of every journey. She is big and loud, but not as scary as she seems. You can keep The Hungry Word Beast happy by feeding her all the right tricky words. Listen carefully or look at her body and you’ll find a clue to which word she wants to eat. Good luck!
Click here for more information about Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun with Words.
The Space Race is a new minigame in Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun With Words.
The monster is flying a rocket through a colourful star-filled universe. He’s aiming to find fuel for his spaceship by making words. He can only do this by listening for the right sounds or looking for the right letters and collecting them, building the word as he goes.
The Monster is rewarded with a stream of stars, which can be used in the shop to buy clothing, food and tools. This game helps the player practice blending and segmenting of individual words.
As the game progresses, each race gets harder, introducing more complicated words and new letters and sounds to practice.
Read more about Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun With Words
We now have a winner for our latest competition. The top prize goes to Tanzina with her monster, ‘Garbage’. Congratulations!
Garbage will be designed by our illustrator Rich Wake for the new Teach Your Monster to Read game “Fun With Words” and she will also receive £150 worth of Usborne books for her school.
The monster will be available as body parts for children to put together, as part of their own monster in the game.
We cannot wait to see the monster animated and ready to begin his journey!
Our judges, illustrator Rich Wake and teacher and Digital Leader Sheli Blackburn chose the winner.
Rich explains why ‘Garbage’ won the competition:
“This monster is very well designed and neatly drawn. Also, we don’t have a yellow Monster in the game yet so he will look lovely and bright in the different environments that he’ll travel to. I was also very fond of his tufty hair and cow skin pants. I think he will make a very cheerful addition to the world of Teach Your Monster to Read.”
The two equally fabulous runners up are Binta with her monster ‘Smiley’ and Devlon with his monster ‘Oro’.
Smiley was chosen because:
“We love his rainbow horns. We think he would probably live in the cloud village.”
Oro was picked because:
“He is very professionally drawn and looks like he really belongs in the game. He could be the cousin of anyone’s little monster.”
They are both beautiful and characterful designs, it was hard to miss them!
We have been overwhelmed by the awesome response to the competition and to the game over the past few weeks. It’s been really fun to see all the imaginative monsters that have come through! Thank you for spending your time creating the them and sharing them with us.
Here is an online gallery of all the fabulous entries! Enjoy!
Teach Your Monster to Read 2: Fun With Words
This Autumn, join the monster on his new adventure with Teach Your Monster to Read: Fun With Words.
In Fun With Words, the monster will continue his journey through a spectacular new kingdom of hidden treasure, balloon flights and spaceship rides!
Meeting new characters along the way, such as the Hungry Word Beast, the Space Pirates and the mischievous “Trickies”, the monster is on a journey to find his lost spaceship. Throughout his adventure, the monster will collect gold stars which can be exchanged for fantastic prizes.
More information for teachers
The game is designed for children who have already mastered our first game: Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps. It complements Letters and Sounds up to the end of Phase 4.
It covers:
- Introduction and practice of new graphemes / phonemes: ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er
- Lots of blending and segmenting practice with CVC, CVCC, CCV and CCVC words, plus words with adjacent consonants and some polysyllabic words
- Introduction and practice of tricky words: he, she, the, to, we, me, be, was, no, go, my, you, they, her, all, are, said, so, have, like, some, come, were, there, little, one, do when, out, what
- Reading and comprehension of sentences and captions.
For updates about the launch of Teach Your Monster to Read: Fun With Words, join our Facebook group or follow us on Twitter. Alternatively email our Community Manager dannie@teachyourmonstertoread with ‘Game 2′ as the subject.
We’ve had a fantastic response to our Design a Monster Competition – over 400 entries!
We’re really excited about announcing the winner, but first we have to choose one. The unenviable task of deciding which monster will go into the next game is up to teacher and digital Leader, Sheli Blackburn (@shelibb – www.digitalleadernetwork.co.uk) and illustrator Rich Wake (www.richwake.com). It’s going to be a tough job.
Above is a very small selection of the amazing monsters we’ve received. Will it be ‘Google Pop’, ‘Jack’, ‘Bella’ or ‘Smelly’? Will the monster that likes sweets and zapping be the next star of Teach Your Monster to Read? In two days we’ll find out.
Thank you so much to all the children who have created their monsters (and the teachers and parents who have sent them in). All the entries are in the Monster Gallery on Facebook.
Do take a look through the Monsters and share them with your friends!
Teach Your Monster to Read has launched a new “Design a Monster” competition with the fabulous prize of seeing your monster in the next Teach Your Monster to Read game.
The Prize
The lucky winner will have his/her monster drawn and added to new game, Teach Your Monster to Read: Fun With Words due to be launched for the new school term in September. The winner will also receive £150 worth of Usborne books for their school.
Three runners up will also each receive £75 worth of Usborne books for their school.
How to Enter
Print off the monster body template here: MONSTER TEMPLATE then add some monsterly features, such as arms and legs, eyes, a mouth, teeth, ears, belts, bows, hair – any parts your monster might want or need!
Send in a photograph of your monster with the first name and age of the designer to [email protected] or enter via our Facebook page.
Entries will be judged by the illustrator Rich Wake and teacher and Digital Network Leader Sheli Blackburn.
The closing date to submit entries is July 13th 2013. Terms and Conditions for the competition can be found here: Competition Terms and Conditions
Good Luck! We can’t wait to see your monsters!
Coming soon to an iPad near you… Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps goes mobile!
With all the same functionality and features that your little monsters loved about the online game, this iPad version will be just as fun and educational, helping young children to practise the initial steps of reading.
Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps is built on the principles of synthetic phonics and follows the teaching sequence in the “Letters and Sounds” programme
The game develops children’s speed and accuracy of letter recognition by taking them on a fantastic adventure through a magical world where they meet island kings and collect letters to win prizes. It also explores blending and segmenting, and introduces “tricky” words in a fun, interactive setting. It is aimed at beginning readers, both those who are on track and those who need more support.
Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps app features the voice of Simon Farnaby from BBC’s Horrible Histories.
To register your interest in hearing about the Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps please email us.
