The End

On Friday 30th July, I enter the computer lab for our last session. It was bittersweet. We leart about photo story that day which was quite interesting and fun. I intend to use it in my lessons when I return to school in September. I think it is a good motivating tool and since the software can be downloaded for free, we will be able to use it in the classroom. This will be an interesting, exciting and motivating tool for the students to manipulate. We need to let the students be a part of the development of the lesson. in so doing the student will learn certain concepts, that I believe will stick because they will be learning without realizing it.

I was happy the class had ended because I need the rest but I was unhappy that it will not be continuing next semester. There is so much still to learn, I was disappointed that we were unable to do pod casting, and making videos.

But all in all it was a good class and if I have to I will do it again but this time not during the vacation, it is so much more difficult to do a class during the vacation than during the semester. Good luck to all on the completion of their portfolio. Hope you enjoyed the class as much as I did. And remember to the run from technology but embrace it because it is our future.

Assessing Sight Words

To determine if a word is in a student's sight vocabulary the teacher can show the student the word for less than one second. The student is expected to say the word as soon as he or she sees it. This can be done by covering the word with a card moving the card for just a few seconds and covering it again, or using a flash cards, where the teacher can show the student the word on the card then remove the card. This process is also call flashing. the teacher must remember that they can only show the words for a few seconds, this is to ensure that the student is not using phonics or structural analysis to decode the word.

Graded word lists are used to determine a student overall level of sight words. These list contain certain words that have been determined to be high frequency words at a certain level or grade.

Another way to assess a student sight words level is to allow the student to read the words in a book written for his or her level. If the student can pronounce 95% of the words in a book at their level or grade the student is said to be at their level or grade. You can do a readability test to determine the level of the book.

We need to try and get our students to the mastery level. this means that the student can pronounce the basic sight words instantly on viewing them. also the student should pronounce the words correctly each time they appear. If the student mispronounce or hesitate should a basic sight word reappear later in the book the student has not mastered that particular sight word.

Please aim for mastery.

Sight Vocabulary/ Words

Sight words are words in our vocabulary that we recognize instantly. We are able to go from the printed form to the word to the spoken form automatically without using any other type of word analysis.

any word can be a sight word for students. If the student can recognize the word instantly without applying any form of word analysis, then the word is in their sight vocabulary. Some students have problems recognizing basic sight words, that is words of high utility that make up a high percentage of the words in most reading material.

Many of our students sight words vocabulary is not at their their academic level. These students may need some form of intervention to help bring their sight word vocabulary up to grade/form level. Students are said not to be at their sight level if they cannot recognize 95% of the words in books written at their level. These students are at a great disadvantage, since they will have to analyze more words than normal readers.

Basic sight words are words that occur frequently in most material that students encounter. There are several list available of basic sight words that teachers can use to assess their students' recognition of sight word. Because these word appear frequently in text it is important that students can recognize them instantly, if not they will not be able to become fluent readers.

Some of the basic sight words that students often confuse are those will similar beginnings, such as: when, where, and what or this, that, and those.

Tomorrow I will be discussing assessing students' sight vocabulary.

What Make Children Read

Today I was amazed to see my nephew pick up a book and read. Although I try to encourage him and tell him the important of reading he hardly ever take my advise. But today i visited a friend and saw him take up a book and stared reading he did not want to put it down. He asked if he can borrow it and was eager to finish the book.

I got curious and wanted to know what about the book did he found so fascinating. i heard him laughing and sharing parts of the book to his friends. I decided to have a look at the book. The name of the book was the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." I open the book to realize that it was written in a cartoon format, and the animation almost looked life like. The style of writing meaning the font used was also animated and looked almost hand written. Just looking at it made me want to read it, and I intend to once I finish my assignments.

I then question my nephew to determine what he found so interesting about the book. He told me that he loved the use of pictures, and not just normal pictures but the animated "stick man" drawings. He also said that it was a popular book and it has a movie. He said just looking at the drawing in the book made him laugh so he wanted to know more.

This experience made me realize that we need to look for certain things in a book when choosing materials for our students to read. find out what interest them, choose materials that are at their level, and leave them to read at their own pace. We can also take them to the library and let them choose their own reading material.

We need to do whatever it takes just to get our students to start reading. I believe that once we get them to start the sky is the limit.

Technology Effectiveness in Classrooms

When we look at how we can incorporate technology in the classroom, we can see the benefits through group work, high-level concept understanding for older students, and improvement in students attitudes toward computer technologies. I believe that because computer use in the classroom is so interactive that it can cause students to learn faster on computer based instructional content, it will change students attitude toward their classes to a more positive one, children who have special needs can be accommodated and can achieve more in technology rich environment, and it can be use among all ages and classes, even with any curriculum.

But in order for technology to have a positive effect learning objectives must be clear and the technology must be used for specific, targeted goals. For example if you are teaching fluency photo story or e books are good tools in incorporate in the lesson. In order for technology use to be effective it must be based not on learning theory but on context, what that means is that it depends on the learner, the learning environment, the knowledge, experience, and attitude of the teacher, the technology used, and the task. What one must remember is that effective teaching and learning drive technology use.

Are We Ready

Who are we fooling? Do you think that we are ready to incorporate technology in the classroom as a teaching tool. I believe not.
We are all excited and eager to learn about all the ways in which we can use technology in the classroom but once we complete this course, how many of us will practice what we have learned and actually go out there and implement it in our teaching.

For one thing the availability of the resources is quite scarce, and after speaking to some teachers on this said course, I realize that we are way behind. some of the teachers are not even aware of the technology available to them at their schools. when I ask about the e-beam most of them responded the "the e what"
Come on teachers we need to go back to our schools, go to the IT department and find out what equipment are available and let them teach you how to use it. too many teachers are intimidated by technology and shy away from its use. but if we continue to do so we are cheating our students. They are so much into technology and we see it everyday. the things I will see my students doing with their cell phones amazes me.

Just think what will happen if we incorporate technology in the classroom, blogging, wikis, concept mapping. an example is we ourselves, look how engrossed and interested and captivated we were when using the tools in the class. We were eager we wanted to know more, this will be the effect that the use of techno tools will have on our students.
I employ you to embrace technology and make it an integral part of you teaching process.

Podcasting

Its always nice and exciting when something new comes along that really takes technology and eduction to a whole new level. Podcasting although it has been around for a while, it has only recently seen an upsurge in its use. This is so because of the development of the iPhone and mp3 players.

Podcasting is the ability to create or listen to audio or video content, called podcast via the web live or it can be downloaded for later viewing or listening on a laptop, desktop, or on a mobile device like a smart phone or many MP3 players.

Downloading a podcast is different from downloading regular audio and video files from a web site because the content of a podcast is updated regularly, and new content can be receive via subscription. You can check out this sight to learn more about podcasting. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

As reading specialist one very good website that provides podcast for us is reading rockets. This site offers specific tips and techniques for teaching reading to younger students. You can go to the site by clicking on the link below.

http://www.readingrockets.org/podcasts/

Here is another site that can help students increase their vocabulary, gain insight and practice with the LIST. http://www.princetonreview.com/podcasts.aspx

On Wednesday we learnt about e-books. It was so exciting and engaging that I did not realize when the class session had ended. If doing an e-book was so captivating for me just imagine what will happen if teachers use it as a tool in the classroom, both as a tool to teach lessons and as a tool to allow student to create stories.

Most people use power point to present information because they see it as a tool only for the purpose of presentation, but I was shocked and excited to learn that we can use power point to do so much more. It was so simple to design an e-book. A child at any level can use this tool to create their own work.

It can make the classroom a inventive, motivated, critically thinking room, where student can collaborate, share, learn and enjoy what they are doing. I mark social Studies for The CSEC examination and one thing I have noticed over the years is that our student do not know how to think critically. This tool can facilitate this also with the advent of web2.0 there are a lot of tools available to teachers to help students improve their critical thinking.

I hope you guys are enjoying this class as much as I am. And take what we learn and incorporate it in our class. Whether we become reading specialist or not, I beseech you to go back to your schools and teach what you have learnt, you may not benefit financially but when our students level of academia improve this will be payment enough.

Blogs and Wikis

Isn't it amazing how far we have come. With the introduction of the computer, we can now do so much that could not have been done just a few years ago. On line banking, shopping, instant communication, share information, play games, and most importantly online learning.

There are so many tools that are available to teachers to enhance her classroom. Teachers should no longer be fixed to chalk and talk. Teachers need to be educated on some of the tools available to them to make their classroom come alive and become an eager place for learning. Two tools that I found quite interesting and easy to use are blogs and wikis.

A blog is a tool that the reading teacher or any content area teacher can use to encourage collaborative teaching or have individual sessions. A blog is part of a website that allows individual to post information. Of course you will have to sign up for it but once that is done, the teacher can get the addresses of students blogs and start posting information to them. She can post assignments, information and ask student to comment on the information, can ask students to upload information that other students can comment on. as a reading tool the reading teacher can post comprehension passages or can post stories and ask students to comment on them. She can ask students to post their story or part of their story and ask students to comment or continue the story. Good tool for us to implement in the classroom.

A wiki is also another tool that can be used in the classroom to encourage collaborative or individual learning. It is a tool that is available on the internet free of charge, again once you sign up for it.

- It allows the user to monitor the constantly changing state of the wiki and discuss the issues that emerge.

- Add summaries of their thoughts from prescribed readings.

- Publish course resources such as handouts

- Can be use to map concepts such as brainstorming and editing a given wiki topic which can produce a linked network of resources.

- Can be used as a presentation tool and students can can comment directly an and revise the presentation content.

- It can also be a good tool for group authoring.

Reading and writing works side by side and one of the most common pedagogical application of wiki is supporting writing instruction. (Lamb,2004). It maximizes the advantages of reflection, publication, reviewing and observing cumulative written results as they unfold.

- It stimulates writing

- Provides a low-cost communication and collaborative tool that focus on text rather than software

- Promote close reading, revision and tracking of preliminary work

- Discourage 'product oriented writing' while facilitating 'writing as a process'

- Prepare students into the writing for a wider audience.

How blogs can be used in the classroom

This was a detailed video on how blogs can be used in the classroom, its importance and its features.

use of blog in the classroom

Found this interesting. Decided to share with the class

Phonics instruction focuses on the letter-sound correspondences so that children learn that the three sounds of "cat" correspond to the three letters, c, a, and t. Knowing the relationships between written letters and spoken sounds helps children recognize familiar written words and decode new written words so they can apply their knowledge of the spoken words. While the English language contains many irregularly spelled words that don't follow the standard letter-sound correspondences, most of these words contain some regular letter-sound relationships, and knowledge of phonics supports children's memory for specific words.

Technology

Potential uses of technology to enhance phonics instruction include the ability to:

• provide tasks that involve students matching sounds and letters, and spoken and written words. In some cases, this simply involves adding letters and a written word component to phonemic awareness activities;
• provide immediate feedback to let students know whether their answers were correct, give them hints or additional chances, and provide correct answers;
• individualize problem sets and present stories to focus on the letter-sound correspondences and words that the student has not yet mastered;
• provide as many repetitions as necessary and alter the speed of speech to meet individual needs;
• provide game contexts, attractive visual presentations, and motivating speech, to engage and hold children's interest;
• provide reports for teachers' and children's progress and areas in which individual children need additional work;
• provide texts for children to read with scaffolds to support phonic skills---for example, software can enable a child to click on any word and hear the individual sounds of the word or the whole spoken word; and
• engage children in productive self-directed work on phonics while the teacher works directly with other children, thereby helping the teacher meet the individual needs of each student.