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See Also
Multiple Meanings Library
Describe With Art
Prepositions Journey
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Magical Concepts
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Magical Concepts is an app for the iPhone and iPad. It was created by a certified
speech-language pathologist who wanted to make “drilling” with flashcards fun and
motivating. This engaging, colorful app includes over 2000 photos accompanied by
audio instructions. Children are welcomed by Mago the Magician, who encourages them
to work hard. Children earn stars for each correct response, and when they accumulate
enough stars, they are rewarded with a magic show.
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Children are welcomed by Mago the Magician, who encourages them to work hard. Children
earn stars for each correct response, and when they accumulate enough stars, they
are rewarded with a magic show.
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Concepts are important building blocks for early academics, and research shows that
understanding of basic concepts is critical for school success and high-level thinking
(Klix, 1983).
Children are required to master the foundations of basic concepts to learn the fundamentals
of academic subject areas. For example, the child must understand the concept of
quantity (e.g., more, less, equal, all) to do mathematical computations and must
know basic reading concepts (e.g., reading left to right, top to bottom, beginning,
end) to learn how to read and write (Busch, 1980). Many concepts are used in daily
classroom instructions by teachers—e.g., temporal direction: “Before you start writing,
read the first paragraph on page 13.” Children who do not master these basic concepts
will have difficulty following classroom instructions (Vernon, 1962).
Children learn concepts by listening to adults, reading, and following commands.
There are five major types of concepts. These are spatial (location), temporal (time),
quantity (number), quality (description), and social-emotional (feelings).
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Magical Concepts includes over 60 concepts that are alphabetically organized. Examples
of the concepts include: Above/Below Angry/Sad/Happy/Surprised Around Apart/Together
Behind/In front Big/Small Bottom/Top Clean/Dirty Closed/Open Cold/Hot Crooked/Straight
Curly/Straight Day/Night Deep/Shallow Different/Same Down/Up Dry/Wet Empty/Full
Far/Near Half/Whole In/Out Inside/Outside Light/Heavy Long/Short Loud/Quiet Missing
Narrow/Wide Next to Old/New On/Under Over Pair Short/Tall Thick/Thin Upside down
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Magical Concepts is easy to use and allows you to:
- Enter multiple students
- Select multiple concepts
- Present cards in order or randomly
- Change settings Select auto-scoring
- Select alternate counts for multiple students
- Enable or disable rewards: the stars and the magic show
- Track correct and incorrect responses
- Email results at the end of the game.
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References
Busch, R. A. (1980). Predicting first-grade reading achievement. Council for Learning
Disabilities, 3, 33–48. Klix, F. (1983). An evolutionary approach to cognitive processes
and creativity in human being. Methods of Heuristic, 9, 19–36. Vernon, P. E. (1962).
The determinants of reading comprehension. Educational and Psychological Measurement,
22, 269–278.
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