Help for Personal Educational Press

This program is an online utility for teachers, parents, and tutors to make flashcards, print word lists, and generate worksheets for educational games. This utility turns your computer into a printing press for the kinds of educational materials, such as flashcards and games, that you would normally buy at teachers' stores.

Personal Educational Press contains word lists for a variety of topics, but a primary focus of this site is to provide reading tools to instruct the beginning reader.

Getting started

How do I use the program?
The program doesn't work because my browser won't allow "cookies." What is a cookie?

Getting the most out of the program

What is an answer list?
How do I change the words and answers?
How do I use my own list?
What is a delimiter?
Can I substitute my own set of pictures?
Can I add my own set of words to the list box?
Flashcards: How can I use answer lists to make two-sided flashcards?
Quizzes: How can I make an answer key?
Quizzes: What does the Shuffle List button do?

Teaching your child or student to read

What are the top ten / top one hundred / next one hundred word lists?
How can I work with the early reader word lists?
What kinds of games can I play with my child or student?
Where can I learn more about teaching reading?

Support

My question wasn't answered here; where can I get customer support?


Getting started

How do I use the program?

The general idea of Personal Educational Press is that you:

  1. Use the tabbed navigation bar to choose a topic (General topics include Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies; Languages includes Spanish, French, and German). Each topic has its own set of predefined word lists.
  2. Use the drop-down list boxes to select the list of words you want to print. This list is called the primary word list. The text box under the drop-down list boxes contains the words in the list. For example, selecting Dr. Seuss -- Hop on Pop (in the Reading topic) puts a list of all the words in that book in the text box. You can scroll down the text box if there are more words than are visible at once.
  3. Optionally, select a corresponding answer list. See What is an answer list? below for more information. (Note: Not all word lists have associated answer lists.)
  4. Scroll down and choose a worksheet style. Note that holding the mouse over a style name shows you a thumbnail example of that worksheet style. The choices are:
  5. See What kinds of games can I play with my child or student? for tips on how to use the cards and worksheets to help your child or student.

  1. After you choose a worksheet style, Personal Educational Press load the options you can use to specify the output in more detail. The output options vary according to the type of sheet generated. For example, Flashcards let you choose whether or not to draw borders around cards, and some list options let you set the number of columns to use.
    Tip: You can scroll up to the word selection menu at any time to change your word list.
  2. Choose which words to print. You may need to choose which word list to use (primary or answer list), or which word list goes first. In some cases you can choose whether to output words sequentially or to use a random selection of words from the list.
  3. Click on the Create Print Window button after you've made your selection. Personal Educational Press creates a PDF worksheet page with your words. If you don't have a PDF viewer installed on your system you will be prompted to do so.
  4. Print the PDF using your browser's Print command. This varies from platform to platform, but is usually the Print option under the File menu. Your browser may also have a Print icon you can click on.

The program doesn't work because my browser won't allow "cookies." What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small piece of data that a web page stores on your computer so that it can "remember" variable information. Personal Educational Press uses cookies to keep track of the word list you want to print, which words you are on, how many columns per page to output, and so on. Cookies are safe to your system because Internet sites only have strictly limited access to them. Programmers can't, for example, use cookies to break into your computer, erase files on your hard disk, etc. For more information on cookies, visit Cookie Central.

The cookie settings for your web browser are generally located in the Security section of the Internet Options tab.

Getting the most out of the program

What is an answer list?

An answer list is a list of words that corresponds to your main word list. For example, if the main list contains math problems for flash cards, the answer list might contain the answers to the problems.

It's important to note, however, that answer lists don't have to be answers to a problem or question. They can represent any corresponding word set. Under the geography heading, for example, the list of the fifty states of the U.S. has answer lists containing those states' capitals, state nicknames, and so on. Another ideal application of answer lists is foreign language words: the main list could contain the English word and the answer list would have the foreign equivalents.

When you set the print options for the selected worksheet style, you can usually choose whether to print the primary word list of the answer list by clicking on the appropriate radio button.

Answer lists give Personal Educational Press the opportunity to let you print a wide variety of educational materials.

How do I change the words and answers?

It's easy to edit the words and answers. Simply edit the words directly in the word list box.

Note! This lets you make quick, temporary changes only. You will lose your changes as soon as you switch to a new list.

How do I use my own list?

You can replace a list entirely with your own words. In fact, since you can't make permanent changes to the Educational Press word lists, it is highly recommended that you save your custom word lists on your own computer. To load or save a list from or to a text file:

  1. Load the text file with the list.
  2. Select All, then Copy the file.
  3. Switch to the Personal Educational Press Screen.
  4. Click on the word/answer text box.
  5. Select All (using the mouse or Control-A), then Paste the contents of your list.

Each word (or phrase, or graphics file name) should be on its own line, ending with an the <Enter> key. If you are working with longer phrases, your word processor might wrap text automatically at the end of each line. This is called a "soft" carriage return and will not be noticed by the View/Edit Word List form. Only "hard" carriage returns, that appear when you press the <Enter> key, signal the end of the word or definition. Tip: In Word for Windows, press the Show/Hide ¶ button to see the hard carriage returns.

What is a delimiter?

A delimiter is the character that separates words from answers. In most cases the delimiter is the equals sign, and you don't need to think about it. However, if your word or answer list actually contains an equals sign, you need to change the delimiting character. (For example, some math problems have equations for "words" that look like: 2+2 = ... In this case the program automatically switches to the pipe bar delimiter (|) to separate the words on the left from the answers on the right.)

Can I substitute my own set of pictures?

Yes! You can use your own pictures (or other pictures from the Internet) in a list. For Internet clip art, simply include the entire URL of the image (such as http://www.clipart.com/animals/monkey.gif). You are responsible for following the copyright holder's terms of use for art found on the Internet. Most clip art sites have stated policies that allow for educational use. For pictures on your own computer, use the complete file name (for example, c:/MyGraphics/monkey.gif).Here are the dimensions for images Educational Press uses:

Can I add my own set of words to the list box?

By all means, email me your word list at webmaster$educationalpress.org (<<replace the $ with @). If I find it to be of general interest and usefulness, I'll be happy to add it to the list for others to use. If the word list is for a book, be sure to include the complete book name and the author's name.

Flashcards: How can I use answer lists to make two-sided flashcards?

When you select the Flashcards print option, the Flashcards Options page has radio buttons which let you specify whether to create an output window using the primary list (for the front side) or the answer list (typically what you'd consider the back side). Furthermore, you can use the Automatically switch between front and back checkbox to specify whether to switch between sides automatically. The PDF file contains your complete set of flashcards in the order you selected.

Here are some print tips:

Quizzes: How can I make an answer key?

Clicking the Answer Key button instead of the Create Print Window button generates an answer key, that is, a printable page with the opposite list in the same order as the quiz. (So, if your quiz displays word list words, the answer list displays the answer list words, and vice versa.)

Quizzes: What does the Shuffle List button do?

The first time you go to the quiz page, Educational Press grabs what's called a random number seed and then uses that seed to set the order of the words. By using the same seed for the quiz and answer key pages, the answers are in the correct order.

If you are making a multiple choice quiz, the random number seed also determines which incorrect answers are selected for each question.

The Shuffle List button resets the random number seed to a new value. So, if you don't like the order of the quiz you made, or the decoy choices for the multiple choice quiz, click Shuffle List and then Create Print Window to try again. You can do this as often as you like until you get your quiz how you want it. Just keep in mind that your Answer Key will not correspond to any quizzes made before you clicked on Shuffle List.

Teaching your child or student to read

What are the top ten / top one hundred / next one hundred word lists?

The "top" word lists rank English words by frequency. For example, the top ten words -- the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it -- are the ten words that appear most frequently in the English language.

The words on these lists are often sight words, that is, they are words that must be memorized by sight since they don't usually follow the spelling rules, or those beginning rules with which the early reader is most familiar.

It is especially important that your child or student master the Top Ten words as soon as possible. Being able to read these words will give the early reader important confidence-building success in their efforts. Conversely, if your child or student hasn't yet mastered these words they will almost certainly face frustration with even the simplest early reader book.

How can I work with the early reader word lists?

I've included the lists of words for some popular early reader books because it is often a good strategy for a student to focus their efforts on a single book. Chipping away at an entertaining book, a page at a time, gives the student a concrete goal.

Choose an appropriate book for this effort. Make sure there are plenty of words the student already knows, but that there are enough new ones to present a challenge. Then, focus your flashcard work and word games on the word set for that book. Alternate between reading the book and playing with the words. Or, if you are a parent and your child is reading a particular book at school, you can complement this by drilling the words in that book at home.

Of course, you aren't limited to the books in the predefined word lists. You can always enter your own list of words for cards and games. Tip: Type the list in a word processor and save it on your computer. That way, you can cut and paste the list into Personal Educational Press as often as you need.

What kinds of games can I play with my child or student?

You can use Personal Educational Press flashcards for basic drilling, but it's more engaging for your child or student to play games. Here are three games you can play with your child or student, and suggestions for other ways to use the cards and game boards. Tip: You may be able to urge or bribe an older child to play word games with your emergent reader.

Word Fish
Word Bingo
Memory
Free Play

Word Fish

This game is a simple variation on Go Fish. Print two sets of flashcards. Experiment with the best number of cards to use. Don't use so many words that your reader gets frustrated, but the deck should be large enough for you both to have fun. Try starting out with around a total of 30 cards, some of which your child or student already knows how to read.

Deal six cards to each player. Players take turns asking another player for a specific card that he or she already has. If the other player has the card, they must turn it over to to asker, who then gets another turn. Otherwise the asking player must "fish" in the deck for a new card. As in Go Fish, if they draw what they asked for, they get another turn.

Players put down their matching stacks in front of them; the player with the most matches wins.

If your reader doesn't know what card you're asking for, or can't read the card he or she want to ask you for, show the card in question. You can keep this game lively by encouraging word play. "Do you have 'friend'?" "I have a friend, but not the word 'friend'! Go fish!"

A variation on this game is to collect word families, not just matching words. In this variation, players try to collect four cards with the same word sounds, such as at, hat, cat and mat.

Word Bingo

You can play word bingo with either a 3 by 3 board or a 5 by 5 board. This is a good game for a group, but may also be played with two.

Print two bingo cards using the same set of words. Note that Personal Educational Press will randomize the order of the words so that each card is different. Tip: Remove the word "a" from the Top Ten List to make a beginner's 3 by 3 bingo board.

Print and cut out a set of flashcards with the same word set.

Draw the flashcards randomly and call out the words. Players cover up words on their card with beans, coins, scraps of paper, or any other handy object. The first player to fill a line across, up and down, or diagonally calls out "Bingo" and wins.

Memory

This is the basic Concentration game. As with Word Fish, print two sets of flashcards for the words you want your child or student to practice. Mix up the cards and arrange them face-down in rows and columns. Take turns turning over two cards per turn, trying to remember where the matches are. When a player gets a matching pair, he or she takes it off the board and gets another turn. Each player should read the cards aloud as they turn them over. Tip: This game can be difficult to get started, so let your child or student start by turning over four cards rather than two the first turn.

Free play

It's easy for us grown-ups to get caught up in making games more and more exciting and challenging, but we must not underestimate the fun a six-year-old can have quietly matching patterns and sorting.

Once you've print out the game boards and flashcards for the words you and your child are currently working on, be sure to keep the cards accessible to the child, perhaps on a bookshelf or in a box near his or her other toys. Gently encourage your child to play with the cards independently. He or she can match pairs, look for word families, or simply spread out the cards on the floor and look at them.

Keep a positive attitude toward these word games, never playing passed the point where your child is disinterested or frustrated, and your child will most likely copy your attitude. Remember, your child probably wants to learn to read!

Where can I learn more about teaching reading?

I highly recommend How to Teach Reading for Parents, Tutors, Parents by Edward Fry, Ph.D. This book offers an excellent step-by-step approach for teaching reading, numerous word lists, reading games, and useful sections such as handwriting charts and literacy tests you can give your child or student to measure their progress. The Personal Educational Press Top 10 Word List, Top 100 Word List, and Top 101 to 200 Word Lists were taken from this book.

Support

My question wasn't answered here; where can I get customer support?

Please email me your question, suggestion, or bug report to webmaster$educationalpress.org (<< replace $ with @ to send email) and I will do my best to respond

 

Close this help window and return to Personal Educational Press.


Personal Educational Press is designed, programmed and maintained by Heidi Brumbaugh Kent.
Contents Copyright (c) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007 Heidi Brumbaugh Kent.

Email is welcome at: webmaster$educationalpress.org (<< replace $ with @ to send email).
Visit my homepage at www.heidi.to.