www.WordCardSoftware.com

WordCard@MarXPublications.com


Word Card Software
Tutorial

Word Card

(WORD)

Version 1.0.3 March 17, 2007
Anita J. Marcott, M.A., CCC-SLP
Mark N. Pickelmann, Ph.D., P.E.
Word Card Website www.WordCardSoftware.com
Copyright © 2006-2007 by MarX Publications. All Rights Reserved.
Using the Word Card:

About This Guide
Introducing the Word Card
The Word Card Tutorial
Glossary

About This Guide

Welcome to the Word Card
Welcome to the Word Card, software that automates the creation of early literacy activities. Using the Word Card software, you can generate early literacy activities from a number of standard word lists or create your own custom lists. You can also create word bingo cards, rapid automatic naming cards, and the short vowel sound poem with graphics.

Contents of This Guide

If you have never used the Word Card before, this guide will help you learn to use the product. As you work through the step-by-step tutorial that we have provided in this guide, you will learn the basic concepts and tasks that you can perform using this program.  After using the tutorial, you can refer to the on-line help pages on the help menu, which provides reference information for specific tasks.

What This Guide Assumes
This guide assumes that you are familiar with running basic computer applications.

This guide also assumes that you have already installed the Word Card on your computer or network. In addition, it assumes you know the location of the program and  have created a shortcut to it. If you do not know if the Word Card is installed  or where it is located, see your local expert or system administrator.
 
 


Introducing the Word Card Software

Overview
This part of the guide introduces you to the Word Card software and explains how you can benefit from using it. It contains the following sections: What is the Word Card Software?
The Word Card software is a computer program for automating early literacy activity preparation.

How You Benefit from Using the Word Card Software
The Word Card software enables you to work faster and smarter, letting you replace pre-made activities with customized word recognition activities, Rapid Automatic Naming, letter/phoneme, shapes, numbers, word work sheets and word bingo games. The word card software also generates a coloring booklet that teaches short vowels in a poem.

Understanding the Process
 To create early literacy activities you must first decide what type of activity you wish to create: word cards with instructions, bingo cards, Rapid Automatic Naming, or the short vowel sounds poem. For the first three types of cards you must also decide what type of list you want to use. You can choose: high frequency word lists, letters/phonemes, numbers, shapes, or self created lists. Finally you will need to know how many sets of cards to make, how many cards you need in each set, and the number of items to put on each card.


The following tutorial will guide you step by step through the card creation. 

The Word Card Tutorial

The chapters in this section provide you with a step-by-step tutorial that covers most of the basic concepts and tasks associated with the Word Card.   The instructions to follow for each step are in Bold Italic.
Word Card program is started by double clicking on the Word Card icon   on the desk top, or you can use the start menu. To use the start menu click on the start button, select all programs, then select MarX Software and finally select Word Card.
When the program starts it will look like:



Start the program.
Double click the word card icon on your desk top.

Holding the cursor over an item for approximately 1 second will cause a short help message to be displayed. After awhile you may find these messages annoying or distracting. They can be turned on and off from the Preferences menu.

Hold the cursor over the open button and wait for the help text to appear.
Move the cursor over the other buttons and labels to view the help text for that item.
Turn the help text off by clicking on the Preference menu (located near the top of the window) and selecting 'Tips are on'
Once again hold the cursor over the open button, no message should appear.
Turn the help text back on by clicking on the Preferences menu and selecting 'Tips are off'
Verify the help text is turned on.

This tutorial and detailed help are available from the Help menu. If you are viewing this tutorial using the program the next steps will cause the tutorial to be replaced with other pages. To return to the tutorial select tutorial from the Help menu.
Click on the Help menu and select Index. The help index will  be displayed in the preview area.
Click on the Word List Tab. This will display the help page for this tab.
Click on the back button located at the bottom of the preview area to return to the index.
You may select other help pages view them and then use the back button to return to the index.
Click on the Help menu and select Tutorial to return to the tutorial.

In the rest of this tutorial when you click on the Create button the tutorial will be replaced with a preview of the card you are creating. You can always return to the tutorial by clicking on the Help menu and selecting the Tutorial. You can also use the print button located the bottom right of preview area to make a hard copy of the tutorial.
At this point you must decide:
  1. What type of list you want to use, 1) a word list, 2) letters and numbers, or 3) shapes?
  2. Which font you want to use when printing the cards.
  3. What type of card you wish to make, Word Card, RAN, Bingo, or Short Vowel Sound poem activity book.

For this first example you will make a word card from the 80 high frequency word list using the Times New Roman font.

First load the word list by clicking on the open button on the Word List tab. 
This will bring up the file browser. Double click on the HighFrequency folder to open it.
You can either select the 80_word_list.txt file and click the open button or double click on the file.

You should now see the list of words in the scroll area on the tab. Now that we have a list of words to work with we will select a font.

Click on the Browse button in the font area.
This will bring up the font browser which lists all the fonts installed on your computer.
Scroll down until you find Times New Roman select it and click OK.
If you do not see Time New Roman on the list, just pick your favorite font and click OK.

Next we will select images to use as a rubber stamp on the cards.  This will provide a decoration to the work sheet.

In the Rubber Stamp area click on the Browse button. This will bring up the image browser.
Select the Dalmatian and the Panda, multiple selections are made by either clicking on the first image and holding down the shift key and clicking on the last image or clicking on the first image and holding down the control <ctrl> key and clicking on the next image.
When you have selected the two images click on the open button. This loads the images into the image area of the Rubber Stamp window.
Now select the two images by clicking on them and using the shift or ctrl key.
To include Word Card activity instructions with the cards you must select colors, shapes and locations. If no selections are made no instructions are printed for the teacher. In this example we will only choose three colors blue, green and red. These lists are multi selection lists so you can select items by clicking on each one or by holding down the mouse button and moving the cursor over the list. To unselect an item simply click on it again.

Click on blue
Click on green
Click on red

We will only use the shapes _____ (line) and X.

Click on line
Click on x

For locations pick on above/over and under/below.

Click on above/over
Click on under/below

The final three entries that must be made are the number of sets of cards, the number of words per card (1-16) and the number of cards per set. Each card in a set will have the same words as all other cards in the set, but the words will be placed in random locations. A set of cards would be used for me activity. Each set of cards will have different words chosen randomly from the list until all the words have been used and then the words are recycled if required. For example if your list had 50 words and you made 10 sets with 5 words each word would be used only once. If you were to make 6 sets with 10 words, 10 of the words would be used twice. For this example we will make 2 sets using 7 words and 2 cards per set.

Next to # Sets area type 2
Next to # Words area type 7
Next to # Cards area type 2




You are now ready to create the cards.

Click on the Create button

The instruction card and a sample card for each set is displayed in the preview area. Clicking on the print button (at the bottom left of the preview area) will bring up the print dialog box which will allow you to print your cards.  You can experiment with other list or create one of your own by selecting the create button. After selecting create you simply type in your list and save it. Selecting the Letter Numbers tab will use letters and numbers when creating the cards. Selecting the Shapes tab make cards with shapes on them. Just follow the above steps with one of these tabs selected.














Next you will create a set of cards for word bingo. When these cards are printed the first cards are the list which you cut up to use as the draw pile. The remaining cards are the bingo boards, which have a four by four grid of words. Optionally you can select images to place in the back ground of the cells of the bingo boards.

Make sure the Word List tab is selected and a list of words is loaded.
You may use the instructions above to select a different font if you desire.
Click on the Bingo tab
Next to # Cards area type 2
Click on the Create button. The preview area shows and example of the cards.
Click on the Browse button in the images area.
Double click on Animals.
Double click on Zoo.
Select all the images.
Click on Open.
In the Images area select all the images.
Click on the Create button.
Examine the cards in the preview area.
You can now print the bingo cards by clicking on the print button located at the bottom left of the preview area.






Next you will create a Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) cards using lower case consonants.

Click on the Letters and Numbers tab.
Uncheck the box next to the upper case 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
Uncheck the box next to the lower case 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
Uncheck the box next to '0123456789'
Click on the box next to the frequency of occurrence list 'tnrshdlfcmgypwbvkxjqz'
Click on the RAN tab
On the RAN tab uncheck the box next to Random
Next to # Sets area type 2
Next to # Cards area type 3
Click on the Create button




You will now see the RAN cards in the preview area. You can repeat the above steps using a word list or you can select the Shapes tab in place of the Letter and Numbers tab. The Letters and Numbers tab lists the letters in alphabetical order and by frequency. The random check box on the RAN tab controls whether the items are chosen at random or are taken in order. When the box is not checked the items on the cards will be in the same order as in the list.









Next you will create the Short Vowel Sound Poem.
Click on the SVSP tab
Click on the Create button

You will now see the SVSP worksheets in the preview area. Click on print to bring up the print dialog box where you can select the number of copies you wish to print.









An alligator went to the pond one day.










E-E-Ed the elephant.





    

And the all grabbed uh, they all grabbed uh,
They all grabbed umbrellas and went to town.





This has been a quick overview of the Word Card software. You should now be familiar with the basic operation of the program.
You can now start creating your own cards. You can refer back to this document or refer to the on line help index.
 
Glossary