Explain this
Black Cat - Numeracy Activity Builder
How the publisher describes it:
“Numeracy Activity Builder is the second in a series of new teacher tools from BlackCat and it has been designed to make it easy to create high quality, ICT-based activities to support numeracy lessons.”
Review by Lindsay Taylor
In brief:
This is a useful piece of software, that can provide tailored activities for the lesson.
“The opportunity to tailor the lessons to provide an additional resource”
This is a useful piece of software, that can provide tailored activities for the lesson. It is however, a little time consuming to set up the activities which can also be very confusing.
The Venn Diagram activity allows you to set various criteria and then you can choose any numbers to be placed in the circles. The ‘check’ facility on the software allows you to check your answers providing immediate, formative feedback. This however does not always give you a definite answer as to whether you are correct, keeping some of the cards in the circles and some which were correct put back to the start. When the cards are put back to the start the facility does not say why you were wrong or offer any hints, which could prove frustrating.
Some of the existing/sample lessons are very visual and can provide an additional resource to the lesson. They are designated to year groups and are very age appropriate. This is an element to the software I would utilise the most.
I feel that I would use this software to accompany my lessons, particularly the existing programs. However, I am not sure how much I would use the activities that I would have to set up myself based on the fact that they are quite time consuming.
I would have liked the whole range of the new framework to include Shape with visual resources for 3D shape, this I feel would be more useful.
There are many benefits to the software, for instance the ready made activities/lessons, the opportunity to tailor the lessons to provide an additional resource to support your teaching, coupled with the fact that children enjoy the modern phrases like "Wicked!" and "Cool!".
Sample activities can be downloaded from: www.blackcatsoftware.com
Lindsay Taylor • Year 4 Primary School Teacher
CD-ROM
Publisher: Granada Learning Ltd (2005)
ISBN-10: 1406013943
ISBN-13: 978-1406013948
