Day 3
Day 3
So
unfortunately I was not able to attend class on this day but was excited to see
how Blackboard Classroom worked. I went to open the Blackboard classroom a
couple of days later and regrettably found out there was no sound. L I still tried to follow the
recording as best I could even though there were large moments of nothing
happening on the screen with no sound. I decided in the end to try my best to
follow the syllabus listing for the day and complete searches for the various
apps that were listed.
The Literacy
Task Analysis of the reading process was the first task of the day. We had been
asked the day before to list the steps involved in a section of print of Bram
Stroker’s Dracula. I was easily able to recognize the obvious steps such as
recall of word pattern, orthographic processing, phonological processing,
visualizing personal image related to the word, visual identification of first
letter, and knowing we read from left to right and from the top of the page to
the bottom. I found it harder to recall other steps such as gross and fine
motor to handle a book, posture, motivation to read, sensory integration and
eliminating environmental distractors, as well as orientation of the book.
Obviously, it was easier to recall what I had to do when it came to letters and
images on the page because the rest of the reading process comes easier to me.
I don’t have visual issues or mobility issues to deal with before I read and
because I am personal motivated to do well and listen in this course, there was
no thinking about motivation to read. I found it incredibly fascinating to
examine all the other items related to reading just one sentence. Of course as
I was reading the list, I was stating oh yeah of course that would be involved
as well. But it also made me think about how much we as classroom teachers may
take for granted when it comes to kids being able to engage in the reading
process. When I saw the first item, motivation to read, it brought me back to
when I taught in Northern Canada and how a lot of students brought heavy
baggage with them to class. All that baggage needed to be squirrelled away or
dealt with in some cases before a lot of students could begin to learn. Many
discipline issues occurred because students were not able to manage the baggage
or put it aside and begin to learn in the traditional classroom. I placed following article for people to read
a little more about issues that Native children are dealing with and have to
get past in order to be motivated to learn in school. Housing conditional,
identity crisis, suicides and access to proper nutrition are just a few.
This is true
as well in Southern classrooms – perhaps not to the same extent – but
motivation to learn is definitely something that teachers need to be aware of when
teaching or learning is occurring in their classrooms because it can be a
tremendous barrier to students.
Another task of the day was examining various reading
remediation apps. I examined most of the apps by letting my three year old and
eight year old play with them. I am going to mention one or two that they
really enjoyed. My eight year old could not get enough of Wizard School. She
still asks to play with it. Wizard School from Duck Duck Moose combines videos,
drawing, and interactive challenges to get kids engaging with material that
interests them. Users can use a device’s camera, camera roll and microphone to
create videos or pictures and send them to family and friends. There are also
challenges that users can pick from to learn about various things and then an activity
at the end for them to create a product. Challenges range from drawing a cell
to making an animal talk. For example, a student could pick to visit Panama
where they learn lots of information about the country and then create a
postcard from their virtual visit. To get Kymber interested in this app I made
her a video of a talking giraffe. Below is the video – please don’t laugh too hard as this was
preliminary and as I already mentioned in class, I am not the best at naturally
recording my voice yet. J
Most of the other apps were examined by my three year old.
The one she continually asked to play again and again was the Memory King app
which is a memory card. Users can play alone or multiplayers. The fact that she
loved this app did not surprise me as she loves playing memory games with cards
as well – she has Memory Frozen and Memory Finding Dory that she loves playing
all the time. Getting back to the app, users can choose from various card
topics if they buy the app, from numbers to letters to animals to name a few.
Another task of the day was looking at various compensatory
strategies for students. I was familiar with a lot of these strategies, however
I wished I had been in class to get a review of some of them. ReadIris/Claro
PDF was something that was used on a regular basis in a former school I taught
in for students who had trouble with reading and writing. Teachers would put
tests and handouts in the app so students could then use the text to speech
feature of Word to complete work. I was unfamiliar with iBooks (Science
Textbooks) but liked the fact that the books were interactive and that students
could prior knowledge to build on concepts and ideas. Another compensatory
strategy I liked was the Crackthebook app which is a collection of interactive
textbooks that cover a variety of topics in great detail. It supports various
reading levels and includes features such as speech to text, highlighting and
note-taking. As they read, students can change the size of text, have the text
read aloud and record their own voices as they read vocabulary terms.
One of the tasks of the day was to find 2 Reading Remediation
apps from each of the following and give a brief description.
Chrome Store:
1. AbiTalk Rhyming Bee: Users pick 2 different endings
(such as ip or it) from a list of 21. Students are then taken to a page that
has two flowers with two words that end in the two different endings on them. A
bee will come out with a word that ends in one of the two endings. The bee will
say the word and students need to choose which word the bee’s word rhymes with
by dragging the word. It then attaches to the flower and another bee comes out
with another word. AbiTalk offers over one hundred mobile apps focused on
reading, math, science, phonics and languages. Their apps are packed with
content, but each one focuses on a single skill, allowing kids to progress at
their own pace. Bonuses and awards built into each app encourage players to
keep practicing.
2.
Search Words From Sentences: Word Search is a popular game to
build practice vocabulary. Users are given a sentence and a crossword where
they have to find some of the words from the sentence. If a student is having
trouble they can ask for a hint. It’s a game to review sentences and review
known words. Below is an example of a sentence and the crossword where students
are to find the words in the sentence. This was an example of elementary level.
Levels range from basic to high school.
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The oldest and
strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear
is fear of the unknown.
By H.P. Lovecraft
By H.P. Lovecraft
GooglePlay Store
1. Sight Words: This fun game covers all levels of Dolch
Sight Words and lets students practice them in context. The game is fun and
simple. Using grade appropriate Sight Words, children assemble short sentences
from given words. The player receives visual and auditory feedback indicating
whether the response is correct. Once the student answers correctly, the exercise
moves to the next sentence. The game contains no ads.
2.
Endless Reader: We actually have this app
downloaded and my kids play it all the time. This app
introduces "sight words", the most commonly used words in school,
library, and children's books. Kids will have fun learning sight words and
their context and usage with the adorable Endless monsters. Each word features
an interactive word puzzle with letters that come alive, and then a sentence
puzzle with words that become what they describe. See the word "dog"
as a barking dog, and the word "up" reach for the sky.
Microsoft Store
1. Kids Sight Words: In this app,
users take Tammy the frog on a journey through four activities as she hops from
one activity to the next to learn and review commonly used English words from
the list of 220 Dolch sight words. There are five levels of vocabulary for the
child to learn and review. In Kids Sight Words, children will: - listen to
common words and identify the correct sight word - learn to recognize common
words at their reading level - improve reading skills by practicing words that
they may have seen or are familiar with - improve reading fluency. It is for
children who are already comfortable with the basics of phonics and blending
sounds. They do not distract the users with unnecessary sounds or images on the
screen, not to mention ads, pop-ups, and unrelated subject matter.
2. Kids ABC Letters: Intended for younger
children who need to learn or practice their ABCs, but could be used for
remediation of students who need practice. With this fun education-in-disguise
app, children will master the name and appearance of each letter. Kids ABC
Letters has four wonderfully age-appropriate sections. Naming Letters provides
distraction-free way to learn the name and the appearance of each letter. Kids
can tap on the letters to verify that they’ve learned the names correctly. In
Forming Letters, children create letters by sliding colorful puzzle pieces into
place. Recognizing Letters is an activity in which children help a cat catch
fish with letters written on them. Finally, Identifying Letters in Context
teaches children how to recognize letters as they appear in words, reinforcing
the concept that words are made up of letters. Together, these games form a
focused way for kids to learn the name and shape of each alphabet letter. Kids
ABC Letters focuses on the letters names, not the letter sounds
Itunes Store
1. IStoryTime:
The iStoryTime Library is a free app that offers both a la carte and
subscription access to a large and growing collection of storybooks based on
The Smurfs, Dora the Explorer, How To Train Your Dragon, Madagascar, SpongeBob
Squarepants, Kung Fu Panda, and Barney, among many others. The app is an
excellent tool to provide children with an experience that is both entertaining
and encourages reading. New storybooks are added weekly and can be enjoyed in
several modes, ranging from narrated stories to reading the story as a book. I
love this app because it has a lot of books involving characters that your
students know and love.
2. Inference Ace: Inference Ace builds users’
reading-comprehension skills with multiple-choice questions. When users launch
Inference Ace, they are to choose the “Play” option and then select a level.
(Only a limited number of levels are available for free. You need to make
an in-app purchase to access all the levels.) Once selected, Inference Ace then
presents users with 10 multiple-choice questions, and they must make a correct
inference to answer each question. If users answer a question incorrectly, they
are offered a hint and another chance to answer it correctly. After completing
a level, users are awarded coins contingent on their performance, which can be
used to play an in-app game or purchase accessories to dress their character.
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