New printable resources

Feb 8th, 2012

Posted by Christine

We've made a new page on the site for all the downloadable resources that we're planning to make available. You can find the page by clicking the Resources button at the top of the screen. So far there are three files, and more will follow.

Two files deal with specific games: one lists all the terms in the various levels of Term Memory, and one lists all the tunes in our current collection for Broken Gramophone.

The other file is larger: it contains screen shots of all of our games. I created this one to make it easier for teachers who don't have computers in their studios to explain the games to their students. I am one of those teachers. Currently I teach in a little room at the back of my house. My computer is down the hall in the waiting room, mere steps away, but I usually don’t feel like I’ve got enough time in the lessons to take my students there and go through new games with them. My habit until now has been to draw little pictures of the game screens in their notebooks and use those to explain what to do.

My impromptu sketches of mushrooms and ice cream cones do leave something to be desired, though, so I decided to create a printable document that includes all of our games. That way, any time that a student has a question about how to play a game, or whenever I want to introduce a new one, I don’t have to rely on my drawing skills – I can just reach for a binder that contains screen shots of the games. For most games, a quick explanation is all that’s needed. For others, I thought it might be useful to be able to play the games right in the lesson, using the screen shots, so I adjusted the images accordingly. Here is an example of how this can work:

Ice Cream: the student faces away from the piano, and looks at the screen shot for Ice Cream. If the student doesn’t know how to play the game, the teacher explains it, and then the game begins. The teacher plays a chord, plays an individual note from the chord, and then the student points to the appropriate ice cream scoop. Repeat this as many times as you like. Then the best part – send the student packing to develop that skill on Tonic Tutor.

You'll notice that some games are represented in more than one screen shot, since they can be used in several different ways. Feel free to get creative! I think that this will diminish the number of messages I receive mid-week from students who are confused about how to play a particular game, and I hope it will be useful for other teachers too. We'll be adding other downloadable files in the near future - if there's something you'd like to see there, please let us know!