Review: Cloze:Interactive solution for teaching cloze skills-Prim-Ed
Cloze is a CD-ROM developed by Prim-Ed for doing exactly what the title above says! It is a simple and clean-visual to use.
There are three options for the child and teacher once you get into the main menu. These are: Drag and drop exercise, Fill in the blanks and a Create your own cloze.
In each of those sections, there are a number of reading pieces to choose from. It works extremely well as a cloze tester and reinforcer and teachers and children will enjoy making their own cloze pieces. That is where the teacher or child could get creative as cloze teaching to me(personally) is a non-interesting and sometimes irrelevant activity. Cloze teaching has been linked with reading and comprehension but some studies show that there is very little difference in reading abilities for children that have been working on cloze exercises.
So, where does that leave us with that product? I think this product can help with the basic skills of reading, the fact that the text is on a screen will help with some motivation and encourage some children to approach reading with a bit more energy! Also, the Create your own cloze section is a brilliant way for children to write up their writing or stories in English or Irish and then take out words as guided by teacher theme-for example, teacher might ask them to take all of the adverbs out or any proper noun. This product is good but it can be brilliant with the use of the teacher’s learning outcomes and creativity.
It says there is a teachers’s guide but this only consists of a “How to work the activities” section as opposed to creative teaching ideas. They also have a demo video of this software available to view on our YouTube channel, which shows how the software can be used.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=
There are 3 CD-ROMs and they are compatible with mac or windows. The first CD starts with ages 5-7, 8-10 and 11 plus. They are priced at €39.95 each or €110 for the whole three.
Last Update: August 22, 2017
The CDs are really good, but when using them on the IWB the word bank on the right hand side of the screen can be difficult to read from a distance or from certain angles as the text is very small and the background colour a little too dark. Overall the product is very good, and I agree that the ability to create your own cloze exercises is very useful.
Agree, word bank way too small for whiteboard – it cannot be read by pupils. Also like ability to create own cloze.