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Hot Dots
"Hot Dots" is a program I ordered with the
2005-2006 Teacher Incentive Grant
awarded by the McDuffie County school district.
They are electronic cards which contain different
reading skills for the students to practice.
 
The cards are kept in small boxes.
Each box is labeled with the main skill in
which the set of cards will focus on.
A complete reading set is made up of 6
different boxes. The first set begins with
reading readiness and the last set advances all
the way to Variant Vowels. I was fortunate
enough to purchase 3 complete sets thanks
to my Board of Education and the
Teacher Incentive Grant.
The cards are set up in ITBS format.
This allows the students to have independent test practice.
 
An electronic pen is used with the cards.
The student places the pen on the dot that they
believe to be the best answer. If the student is
correct, the pen will light up and make a fun
and exciting sound. The pen will also inform the
student if he or she picks the wrong answer
by making a strange sound.
 
When we first begin using "Hot Dots,"
I noticed several students were just playing by
pressing the pen on all the dots to listen to
the sounds. Therefore, in order to ensure
that the students were using the cards to best
benefit their learning environment,
I developed a system.
Each student has a folder with his or her name on it.
The folder contains 5 cards.
The cards are formatted front and back,
so there are a total of 10 problems.
 
On Mondays and Wednesdays during my
teaching assistant's (Mrs. Story) small group
reading time, the students work with their
assigned cards. The reading time is a total
of 30 minutes. Half of the time is spent
working with the cards. The other half
is spent writing sentences with words from
the cards. The students attempt a few sentences
on their own, they then show the sentences to
Mrs. Story and she works indivually with each
student helping them correct any errors in
the sentences. Over the past few months, the
students have improved greatly on creating sentences.
 
The sentences below show an example
of one student's first attempt.
As you will notice, the student used color
words over and over in his or her sentences.
There are also a few words missing from
some of the sentences. These are two areas
that Mrs. Story will focus on while
working one on one with this particular student.
Each Friday the students take a quiz
that I created using the exact cards the
students practiced on throughout the week.
This allows me to see if the students
understand the skills they are practicing.
It also helps to ensure that the students
take the "Hot Dots" seriously instead of
playing around with the pens and
cards to hear the sounds.
 
If the student gets all the answers correct
on his or her quiz, he or she is rewarded
with a sticker on our "Hot Dots" poster.
Once a student has earned 5 stickers,
he or she will receive an ice cream ticket.
 
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