Educator Plus

A teacher can easily get a passage of text, the text of a short story, or a chapter from a longer book for example. Paste it in to GridForge Studio, see how the readability varies through the text, altering how 'granular' this is by a simple slider.

Paste the text into the cloze creator, choose to remove a certain percentage of nouns or verbs, for example, for pupils to fill in the blanks, or to have adjectives replaced by different adjectives to create a different style of exercise, or any of the many other cloze based options built in.

Then paste the text into the 'select from text' option in the database which will automatically select all the words that are in the text and give a list of any that are not present so that they can optionally be added. A dedicated collection containing just these words can then be created.

Then it is trivial to create a wide range of worksheets using the 28 different element types that are available. A selection of the words can be pasted into the wordsearch creator (GridForge Studio was originally just a word search creator), with a wide range of difficulty levels easily available, distractor words, manual positioning of words if wanted, drag an image in to be used as a background image / mask to get a relevantly shaped wordsearch. And that barely scratches the surface! The wordsearch can be used in a worksheet element or exported as a pdf, or an svg or png, or as an interactive html file. (Cloze exercises can also be exported as interactive html files, or just pasted into a word processor or other external application as well as used in the worksheet creator).

This sounds quite overwhelming, but it is all very straightforward to do, the teacher could easily create several wordsearches at different levels, half a dozen different worksheets (all graphically rich in design if wanted, different shaped elements etc.) and several cloze exercises of various types in half an hour. The time consuming part is getting dedicated images, but if a team of teachers are working on the same topic then one could collate the images, create a collection in GridForge, selecting just the words and images, and export the collection for other staff to use, another could create context sentences and clues (definitions) and do the same.

Imagine a lesson where students write their own context sentences or draw their own pictures for vocabulary words. The teacher can then quickly add these to GridForge Studio, and the students can see their own work appear in the next day's worksheet or wordsearch. This fosters incredible ownership and pride in their learning.

Once a dedicated collection is created, the speed at which a teacher can generate a vast range of materials is breathtaking. GridForge Studio enables differentiation with ease. In a short time a teacher can create:

• A simple, image-based matching worksheet for struggling learners.
• A context-sentence-based cloze exercise for the core group.
• A complex morpheme tree analysis for advanced students.
• A fun, thematically shaped wordsearch as a whole-class consolidation activity.

The fact that collections are trivially easy to share means that GridForge Studio can be a platform for entire teams and schools. A department can now adopt a "divide and conquer" approach:

• The Head of English finds a great short story for Year 8.

• Teacher A spends 30 minutes finding and adding images to a new collection for that story.

• They export and share the collection and image folder.

• Teachers B, C, and D can now instantly import that collection and, in minutes, generate their own unique worksheets and activities tailored for their specific classes.

This workflow respects teachers' expertise while saving them their most precious resource: time. It fosters collaboration, ensures consistency, and allows for the rapid creation of high-quality, customised, and engaging learning materials.

Unprecedented speed from concept to classroom

• Idea: "I need a worksheet for the '-all' word family." (a few seconds)

• Action: Type 'Call' into the Phonetic Patterns filter. A list appears: ball, call, fall, hall, tall, wall ... Select all the words(10 seconds)

• Creation: Click "Create Worksheet," drag in an anagram element, an image element, and a "context sentence with missing word" element. Position, group and replicate six times. Add a name element at the top (60 seconds)

• Creation 2: Choose 'Library Selection' as word source, load words to word pool. Select the words you want to use and assign them (20 seconds)

• Result: A professionally designed, targeted, and pedagogically sound worksheet is ready to save and print in under two minutes.

This is completely feasible, I have done this exact process myself in considerably less time than stated above, but this is just an illustration, creating resources clearly is not a race. And there is a large caveat - in the case above the images were already available in the database. And this would just give the most basic layout; GridForge Studio has amazing styling options and it would only take another couple of minutes to give the worksheet a different look.

Wordsearch Creator

There is optional manual word placement and manual filler letter editing, an option to maximise letter sharing during the normal automatic word placement.  Use GridForge's powerful grapheme-based letter pattern feature to optionally remove letters from placed words. A larger selection (over 600) of Google fonts is offered. A single click can convert any font, included or local, to an outline font suitable for colouring in. Use 'substrings' from the placed words as distractors to fill up to 40% of the spaces in the wordsearch grid to increase the puzzle's difficulty. Create up to 30 versions of a puzzle, ideal for a class set that solves the problem of pupils copying. Solutions can be highlighted by a rectangle around each word, by rendering the words in bold, or both.

Masks and image backgrounds can be created from svg images, in addition to the png and jpg files that The Educator version uses. Over 60 built in cell styles, plus the option to upload your own custom cell shapes (as svg files). We will be providing downloadable extension packs in the future. There is a range of textures that can be applied to cells, and also to the puzzle background. Over 50 graphical effects can be applied to cells, or to the text layer. Effects can be adjusted in intensity, also the 'lighting' can be adjusted. The apparent 'height' of the text can be adjusted, and there is fine control over the text position within the cells.

Puzzles can be exported as HTML5 files that can be played in any browser. All styling is included. Optional timer. Simple zoom control. One click 'High Clarity' mode, removes all styling, switches the font to the highly legible Lexend Deca, and changes the colour scheme to a choice of three high contrast schemes, with the option to manually set text and background colours. Full screen option, ideal for displaying on a large screen. On completion there is the option to show one of 28 'reward' animation effects.

Wordsearches can be used in the worksheet creator, a single click imports the puzzle grid and wordlist as separate elements.

Speaking as a former teacher, I am certain that this will change your perception of wordsearches, there really is nothing else like GridForge Studio. It has immensely powerful and useful features with a range, flexibility and ease of use that has never been seen in puzzle creation software before.

Cloze Creator

When I decided to extend the capabilities of GridForge beyond just wordsearch creation, the cloze feature was the first one added. Once again, GridForge Studio is taking cloze style exercises beyond anything you've seen before, with a plethora of options, many of which are unique.

Of course there is the standard cloze option to remove every Nth word automatically. Words can be removed from the text and added to the word bank manually by clicking on them. Words can be targetted by parts of speech either in simple mode (just nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) or advanced mode. The percentage of words removed can easily be altered using a slider control. Punctuation can optionally be included in the cloze process. The 'blank' space left where words have been removed can be either a constant length or word length appropriate. Letter hints can be used, including the first N letters of the target word. The text can be prepared for a C-test with a single click. Instead of full words being removed, just the vowels (with option to include the letter 'y') or just the consonants can be removed from the target words. There is an option to change all text to lower case, useful if punctuation has been removed so that sentence beginnings are not given away.

In addition to these powerful features there are more modes! For some groups of pupils it may be appropriate to just give the task of finding the target words in the text so there is a 'Find the Word' option, where the target words are placed into the word bank as normal but not removed from the text. There is a synonym mode in which instead of a blank replacing the target word, a synonym is placed into the text. In a similar fashion there is an antonym mode. And there is also the exclusive 'Hyde Words' mode (think 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'), in which the target words are replaced by other words. The replacement 'Hyde' words can be random or from the same part of speech. The word source for the Hyde words can be random from the whole word library, selected from a manually entered list or from a selected word library collection. For an additional challenge there is also a 'no gaps' mode. As the name suggests, in this mode words are removed but no gaps are left, so the object of the exercise is now to place the words in the correct positions in the passage.

In addition to operations on full words, the targets can also be graphemes. Using GridForge's powerful grapheme operations, graphemes can be added to the grapheme bank, and a user controllable selection of them removed from the text. The removed graphemes are added to the word bank just as words would be.

Words can optionally be removed from the word bank to 'fade' the scaffolding, pupils will have more gaps than words and have to suggest suitable words for the gaps that are left. Red herrings can also be added to give more words in the word bank than there are gaps. And words in the word bank can be changed to anagrams by a click.

The cloze exercise can be used in the worksheet creator, a single click imports the passage and word bank as separate elements. The exercise text and word bank can be copied and pasted into external applications. And the cloze exercise can be exported as an HTML5 file that can be played in any browser.

The above may seem very complex, but in use it is straightforward and very fast in operation and makes possible exercises that hitherto were just not possible without a great deal of time consuming manual work.

Worksheet Creator

The GridForge Studio worksheet creator enables the creation of advanced word based worksheets in a fraction of the time it would normally take. Making extensive use of the extensive word library database that is included in the package, great looking targeted activities can swiftly and easily be created.

The worksheet creator has 28 elements that can be used. Simply click on an element button to add to the sheet. Add multiple types of elements to create a group, alter their size, position and appearance to your requirements, then replicate using a simple slider. Create a pool of words that can be used in the worksheet from a variety of word sources: word library collections, words selected in the word library, GridForge Studio wordlists, manual entry, current wordsearch words or the current cloze word bank. Then assign words from the pool to the worksheet, one word for each replication, either manually or automatically.

The elements included are

• Word - just displays the word
• Initial Letter - the first letter of the word
• Clue - definition or 'clue' for the word, taken from the word library database, can be manually overridden
• Anagram - letters of the word jumbled up
• Linked Word - if using linked wordlists, the word linked to the operational word
• Jumbled Sentence - context sentence from the word library database with the order of the words jumbled
• Missing Word - context sentence from the word library database with the operational word removed and replaced by a gap
• Spelling Die - letters or graphemes that form the word, arranged as the spots on a die would be
• Name - ready made name, date, class element
• Text - enter your own text
• Blank - an empty element, can be styled as you wish
• Write-In - an element for the word to be written in, with a variety of options eg. line, box, boxes for individual letters
• Handwriting - guidelines for handwriting practice
• Synonym - displays a synonym of the word, taken from the word library database
• Antonym - displays an antonym of the word, taken from the word library database
• Wordsearch - adds two elements, the current wordsearch grid and its wordlist
• Cloze - adds two elements, the current cloze exercise and its word bank
• Graphemes - displays the word with selected graphemes removed
• Homophone - displays a homophone of the word, taken from the word library database
• Rhyme - displays a word that rhymes with the current operational word, taken from the word library database
• Image - displays an image, either a custom image assigned to it or an image taken from the word library database
• Shuffled -used for matching exercises
• Morpheme - displays the morphemes of the word, selectively show/remove prefix(es), root suffix(es)
• Word sum - displays word and its morphemes, selectively show/remove word, prefix(es), root suffix(es)
• Morpheme Matrix - displays a morpheme matrix from the assigned set of words
• Morpheme Tree - displays a tree (lines or 'organic') made from the morphemes of the assigned set of words, selectively show/remove word, prefix(es), root suffix(es)
• Word Builder - takes an assigned set of words, breaks them down into letter groups or morphemes, then displays these as a block, pupils build the words from the 'building blocks'
• Special - displays the content of one of the special fields associated with the word

The worksheets can be exported as pdf files or png images, including answer sheets.

A set of specially created images covering over 150 of the Fry/Dolch words can be downloaded from this website, and are referenced in the database. At Verbatrix we are of course commited to equality and diversity, the images of humans in this collection show a variety of shapes, sizes, ethnicities, cultures and appearances. Not everyone is a slim, perfectly featured specimen of humanity. In the real world people have acne, birthmarks, alopecia, grow old, need assistance equipment. The images were produced to complement the GridForge word library but can of course be used in other material as long as the use complies with the licence. We will be producing further image packs that can be added to the word library database.

This component of GridForge Studio is another incredibly powerful feature that may seem overwhelming at first but in practice it is very straightforward and quick to produce high quality, innovative and superb looking worksheets. This is a huge time-saver.

Text Analysis

The text analysis component of GridForge Studio is yet another incredibly powerful, feature packed and easy to use utility. Simply type, paste or drop a text file into the text box, then choose from a variety of analyses.

• Parts of Speech - simple mode shows the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, advanced mode also shows proper nouns, pronouns, determiners, prepositions, conjunctions, particles and numbers
• Syllable Analysis - groups words with one, two, three, or four or more syllables
• Readability -  gives number of words, sentences, syllables, characters, average sentence length, average word length in syllables, number of complex words, average reading grade level, Flesch Reading Ease score, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Automated Readability Index, SMOG Index,FORCAST Formula value, Spache Formula value, Gunning Fog Index, Coleman-Liau Index, Linsear Write Formula value, Dale-Chall Formula value. A 'Rolling Readability' chart, where values selected from the formulae available are plotted to show how they vary throughout the text. This can be cumulative or windowed, the interval type can be in sentences or words and the size can be adjusted using a simple slider control. The display can show US Grade Level or UK Reading Age. Further graphical information is provided by a Fry Readability Graph and a Raygor Readability Estimate Graph. For both of these there is the option to take multiple samples from the text. Statistical information can be exported as a text file, graphical information as png files.
• NGSL Analysis - the text is analysed against the New General Service List - Graded Reader bands. The number of words from the text that are in the NGSL list, the number not in the list and the total number of different words is shown. The words from each band are shown, optionally with number of repetitions, and there are horizontal bars to give a simple visual interpretation of the band and cumulative coverage. There is the option to exclude proper nouns. The words not in NGSL are also shown.
• CPB Analysis - the text is analysed against the Children's Picture Book sight words. The text is analysed in the same way as in the NGSL analysis - as this list does not have predetermined bands the user can adjust the band size from 25 to 200 words using a simple slider control.
• NDW Analysis - the text is analysed against the New Dolch Words list. The text is analysed in the same way as in the CPB analysis.
• Fry Analysis- the text is analysed against the Fry 1,000 Words list. The text is analysed in the same way as in the CPB analysis.

Word Library

This is a database containing over 110 thousand words and associated data. The worksheet designer makes extensive use of this database. The database content can be edited and extended, and words can easily be collated into groups for whatever purpose is needed. There is a powerful and easy to use word library manager to interact with the data, with a straightforward, clear interface. In addition to complete words, the database also contains roots and affixes.

Words can be tagged, and be assigned to categories and, very powerfully, collections of words. There is a powerful, easy to use filtering system. Words can be marked as favourites. GridForge Studio ships with 32 tags already assigned to words, and 19 ready made collections. These can easily be edited or added to.

Words

Each word has over 25 fields associated with it. These include:

• Clue - a definition or multiple definitions
• Context Sentence - the word used in context, can be multiple entries
• Syllables - syllable count and the word broken down into syllables, with a button to automatically generate this information
• Phonemes - the word broken down into phonemes, with a button to automatically generate this information
• Anagram - a particular anagram can be entered in this field if desired, rather than using the automated version
• US/GB Spellings - alternative spellings
• Common Misspellings - optional common misspellings (not yet used in the worksheet creator, ready for future feature)
• Morphemes - word broken down into morphemes, with an easy to use editor
• Antonyms - set of words with an opposite meaning
• Synonyms - set of words with a similar meaning
• Rhymes - set of words that rhyme
• Homophones - set of words that sound the same
• CEFR - words levelled against the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages scale
• Image - location of associated image file(s)
• Audio - location of associated sound file(s)
• Notes - text field for users to add their own notes about the word
• Special - five text fields that can be used for whatever purpose the user wants, eg. GridForge Studio ships with a collection of chemical elements, S1 contains the chemical symbol, S2 the atomic number, S3 the classic periodic table group and S4 the modern periodic table group.

Tags

Tags are used for organising words and can easily be created and managed. GridForge Studio ships with 32 tags:

• BSL - Business Service List, a list of over 1,700 words that have a very high frequency of use in business English
• CPB - Children's Picture Book Sight Words, a new research-based list of high-frequency words, the resource contains the most prevalent 999 words in picture books
• Common Exception - common exception, or tricky words
• Dolch Words - 220 service words and 95 nouns commonly taught to young children, widely used but now superseded by the New Dolch Words
• FEL - Fitness English List, a list of English words with a high frequency of use in the fitness industry
• Fry Words - most common 1,000 words according a list developed by Dr. Edward Fry, commonly used in early education
• Fry 100 to Fry 1,000 - the Fry words in ten lists of 100 words
• High Frequency - high frequency words from Letters and Sounds
• Next 200 - Letters and Sounds next 200 words
• Phase 2 to Phase 5 - phases from Letters and Sounds
• NAWL - New Academic Word List, a list of over 2,800 of the most important words for academic English
• NDW - New Dolch Words, an updated list of over 800 words that cover around 90% of texts aimed at children
• NDL lemmatised - New Dolch Words List lemmatised, with errors from original source list removed
• NGSL - New General Service List, over 2,800 of the most important words of general English, aimed at second language learners it gives over 90% coverage of most texts of general English
• NGSL Sup. - supplementary words to the NGSL, includes days of the week, months, numerical words
• TSL - list of 1,200 words that combined with NGSL gives over 98% coverage of recent Test of English for International Communication tests
• Year 1, 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6 - lists of common exception words, taken from the National Curriculum for England, that children should be confident of spelling after completing the respective years

Categories

Traditional hierarchical organisation. GridForge Studio does not ship with any categories set up, but this structure is in place for any users that prefer this way of organising things.

Collections

A powerful method of collating the words in the word library database, GridForge Studio ships with 19 ready made collections. Collections can be static - a manually curated list of words, or dynamic, which use filters to auto update if the database changes. Collections can easily be created, edited, imported or exported, and are the preferred way to pass on bespoke database content to other GridForge Studio users.

The collections shipped with GridForge Studio are:

• Fry First One Hundred Words to Fry Tenth Hundred Words - ten sets of 100 words from the Fry 1,000 Words list
• English - English vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 663 words
• Mathematics - mathematics vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 242 words
• Biology - biology vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 857 words
• Chemistry - chemistry vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 501 words
• Physics - physics vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 523 words
• Economics - economics vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 437 words
• Geography - geography vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 681 words
• History - history vocabulary, aimed at secondary education, 679 words
• Periodic Table - the elements of the periodic table, includes symbol in field S1, atomic number in S2, traditional group in S3 and IUPAC group in S4.

Filtering

There is a very powerful but simple to use filtering system to drill down to the set of words that you want. Filtering can be done using the following criteria:

• Phonetic Patterns - enter comma separated patterns, eg. CVC, CCVC, CVCe, thVC. C = consonant, V = vowel, lower case letter = itself
• Grapheme Patterns - enter comma separated patterns, eg. ch, sh, th. Use ^ at start for prefixes, ^ at end for suffixes, eg. ^un, ing^
• Word Length - filter by minimum and/or maximum word length
• Definition - only select if word has a definition in the database
• Syllable Count - filter by minimum and/or maximum syllable count
• Tags - filter by tag(s)
• Categories - filter by category(s)
• Collections - filter by collection(s)
• CEFR Level - filter by CEFR level(s)
• Favourite - show only favourite words

There is also an advanced filter builder that gives access to all fields, and can operate on either the entire database or the currently filtered set of words. 

Other features

• Import / Export - save and restore backup copies of your database
• Select from Text - very useful when preparing resources from a particular piece of text. Just paste the text into the text box and all the words from the text will be selected from the database, ideal for very quickly making a collectionS
• Paste Words - for bulk adding words to the database, simply paste a piece of text into the text  box and any words that are not already in the database will be added
• Import from Wordlists - similar to the 'Paste Words' function but using the current GridForge Studio wordlists
• Search - search words only or all fields, uses the standard GridForge ^ notation for positioning, eg. ^run would select all words beginning with run
• British / US English - choose the default view
• Settings - Set the media base directories for image and sound files. It is highly recommended to use paths relative to these base directories for ease of portability. Tag display settings allows selection of which tags to show in the main database word view - having all tags selected as visible can make the screen very cluttered