Education and demonstration – Question or problem eliciting response
Reexamination Certificate
2000-10-11
2002-06-11
Ackun, Jr., Jacob K. (Department: 3712)
Education and demonstration
Question or problem eliciting response
C434S353000, C434S354000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06402522
ABSTRACT:
STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT
Not Applicable
REFERENCE TO SEQUENCE LISTING, A TABLE, OR A COMPUTER PROGRAM LISTING APPENDIX
Not Applicable
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to educational devices, more particularly to book-like educational devices such as workbooks, which permit children, especially young children, children with learning problems, and children with limited proficiency in the language of instruction to practice in a wide range of learning skills in mathematics, language, science, social study, musical grammar, etc. in a way that promotes a sense of self-confidence and joy.
Workbooks are well known in the educational field. A wide variety of workbooks have been developed to aid in teaching children arithmetic, grammar, languages, history, and other standard essentials in school curricula. Such workbooks are valuable instructional tools because they cover a wide range of learning skills, because they provide the diversity of formats, and because exercises are typically sequenced from easiest to most difficult so that children can learn more easily and their progress can more readily monitored.
However, the conventional workbooks, which employ the pencil as a traditional recording tool, have important limitations. The following will explain this statement in detail:
a) Some children, especially children with learning problems, make many errors while they work. Such children erase frequently, causing their papers to become messy. When their papers are messy, children do not have a feeling of satisfaction because they do not receive a clear picture of their accomplishments. As a result, children try to avoid practicing learning skills.
b) All children, especially children with low level of self-confidence, want to check and correct their own work by themselves because they would like to display to parents, teachers, and others only their_work that is 100 percent correct. However, the checking mechanisms of many workbooks, while possibly appropriate for adult supervisors, discourage children from checking their work by themselves because the format of the answer keys is intimidating. Such checking mechanisms are too busy and require a comparison of a student's answers with drawn or written answers on answer-key pages, which are often presented in a reduced, two-dimensional, busy format. The literature exhibits checking mechanisms of this type in Kennedy,
Third Grade in Review
, Grand Rapids, MI Instructional Fair, Inc., 1993, pp.44 and corresponding answer key; Brighter Child Series,
Math,
1
Grade
, American Education Publishing, 1992, pp.21 and corresponding answer key; Gregorich,
Math,
1
Grade
, School Zone Publishing Company, 1994, pp. 13 and corresponding answered key; and Homework Helpers,
Basic Phonics, Grade
2, Frank Schaffer Publications, Inc., 1995, pp13 and corresponding answer key. These formats repeat the exercises themselves with pluralities of pictures and additionally contain either matching lines, or circles, or shades, or colors. Children with poor discrimination skills are especially unable to apprehend distantly differences between their answers and the answers provided on such keys. There is essentially only one way to receive feedback—words from a supervisor: “You are right!” If a child makes mistakes, he/she generally tries to quickly erase them. But unfortunately, many traces of incorrect answers remain on the paper.
c) Although exercises in the conventional workbooks are generally enriched by fun drawings and interesting formats, many children find them boring. Young children, children with LD (learning disabilities) and ADD (attention deficit disorder) are reality-oriented learners. They succeed in concentrating, performing, and learning when the task allows them to be immersed in the task physically as well as mentally. They rather prefer to do something (sort, place, match, insert, and so on) than write.
d) Children with short memory need to repeat exercises many times in order to acquire a particular skill. However, exercises in conventional workbooks that use a pencil can be used only once.
e) Teachers spend a great deal of time checking children's written answers. This procedure is too time consuming, especially for large class instruction. As a result the teacher is not able to have sufficient time to provide guidance and prompts to students with low independence, such the students with limited proficiency in the language of instruction or students with learning problems.
Therefore, a long-standing need has existed to provide children, especially young children, children with learning difficulties, and children with limited proficiency in the language of instruction with alternative workbooks which increase children's self-confidence giving them opportunity to be successful in practicing learning skills and be rewarded for good job. These workbooks should provide manipulative activity and have easily readable one-dimensional answer keys, to allow children to correct their work by themselves without traces of incorrect answers, and to permit them to repeat exercises again and again. Also a long-standing need has existed to provide a teacher with an instructional tool, which saves time giving the opportunity to rapidly, at a glance check students Works.
Various attempts have been made to create educational devices that eliminate writing, incorporate manipulative activity, provide children with opportunities for self-checking and self-correcting, and provide teachers with the opportunity to immediately assess class or group understanding, but none of these is completely satisfactory for all above-stated purposes.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,493,654 to Stuart involves using of a piece of string to record answers to exercises. To check their work, children compare their placement of the string with a drawing showing its correct placement. This answering checking method is potentially confusing to children with learning difficulties. If there is an incorrect response, it is quite difficult to tell which response is wrong. Additionally, the technique with string requires an identical format of exercises on each page. This feature is restrictive for workbooks, which cover a wide range of learning skills and use the diversity of formats.
Another device on the school market is exemplified by the VERSA-TILES® system described, for example in the brochure ETA® Primary Grades Catalog, produced and published by Educational Teaching Aids. 1996, pp.22-29. This_system offers systematically arranged exercises that are answered using manipulative activities involving the placement of tiles into a specially made frame. To answer the multiple problems in an exercise, children select tiles and place them in the frame. To check their work, they compare the picture they have created with the tiles with the picture in the answer key, which is given in very reduced form. The method of checking answers is difficult because it involves two-dimensional complicated figures presented on two different scales. An additional difficulty for children with learning problems is that they have to compare these figures at a distance. Moreover, children are unable to determine initially what particular question was wrong. Furthermore, this device does not provide answers in a conventional form in addition to the graphical form.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,781,598 to Cutler describes a booklet and a separate decoder that functions as an answer key. To answer an exercise, a child selects one of three responses, each of which corresponds to a shape (circle, square, and triangle). Using this device, children check their answers by comparing the shape they selected with the shape for the answer on corresponding item on the decoder. This device has three especially serious deficiencies: 1) It contains mechanical parts, such as wheels rotated about an axle, which reduce the reliability and duration of the system; 2) It does not provide answers in a conventional form in addition to the graphical for
Gabay Eleonora
Kogan Natan
Ackun Jr. Jacob K.
Miller Bena B.
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