This program will turn a piece of text into a set of worksheets. You can type in the text, or import it. The text must have been saved from HyperCard (ie, from Word Weaver or from one of the other "Practise your Skills" programs), or if from a word processor, as a text file. To do this you choose Save as… from the File Menu, then choose "Text" from the pop-up box. This saves a simpler version and this program can import it easily. Or use SimpleText or TeachText.
Some Instructions to get you started.
Begin with text in the form of a paragraph. The program will separate the paragraph into sentences for all but the cloze exercise. Click the "Begin" button, choose as many exercises as you want, and you will be led through step by step.
When you click the "Print" button, you are given the choice of "Oops!" (you can go back and make another change), "Skip it!" (don't print but continue to the next exercise) or "Print". Once you have tried it a few times you will understand its versatility. Send me any further recommendations to improve it, if you like.
The extraordinary teacher, Julia McCall, has discovered that she can put "teapot" into the cloze instead of a blank and so turns out these lovely "teapot" exercises. Do you remember?
"I usually wake up at 6.30 in the teapot."
Some pointers and warnings.
Punctuation Marks
HyperCard regards a sentence in "quotation marks" (") as a unit, and treats it like a word. This causes problems in the programs. You can avoid these by omitting the normal "inverted commas", or by using Option-[ and Shift-Option-[ to give you (“) and (”).
Work written by students needs to be checked for little things like periods at the end of a sentence, spaces between words, no space between a punctuation mark and the previous word. Because all these programs involve looking for and manipulating words and sentences, a little time ensuring the original is correct will give you good exercises to work with. (Here endeth the lesson.)
Fonts
Experiment with different fonts. The worksheets may look best with a font that's only in your computer.
Different fonts use different underlines for the cloze gap. Do you want a series of dashes or one unbroken line? See the difference between Monaco and Times.
Spacing
This button allows you to space your text down the page. Option-clicking it (that is, click it while holding down the option key) will compress the text.
See the two buttons, "Pointers" and "Teacher" for this information on the opening screen.
