Keep on Blogging!

I know that many of us are relieved to complete our ICT blogging assignment. The task seemed monumental but, I'm sure you will agree, turned out to be an excellent learning experience. I have learnt so much from reading your blogs. To those of you who suggested sites that could be of help, Thank you so much. To those who injected doses of much needed humour, loved it! Let us continue to blog and share ideas, resources, frustrations etc. This could be an excellent forum for the first batch of Reading Specialists, our mission- to make a difference in the lives of struggling young readers.

Keep on blogging!

Reading in Rhythm

Fellow bloggers, I came upon a very interesting website which advocates teaching children to read using rhythm. Hmmm! West Indians are born with rhythm. We walk in rhythm, we talk in rhythm and we move in rhythm. Why not teach our children to read in rhythm? Their objective is to make learning interesting and exciting so they use raps and chants and song- like repetitions which they call rhythm and rhymes. The activities are age appropriate and learners seem to love it. You can read more about it by visiting the following link:

http://www.phonicsrhythmsrhymes.com/gradefour.html

A Must Have Experience: Walking in a Struggling Reader's Shoes.

The Demonstration Way.

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine what struggling readers go through. Reading was never a problem for most of us. Words on a page never looked like Greek. I grew up reading; books were around me all of the time. My parents read, my siblings read, my teachers encouraged me to read . I’m sure most of you, my fellow Reading Specialists, have had the same experience. As a result we are able to read easily and consequently comprehension followed. It’s a no-brainer!

Unfortunately, for some of our students, the words on the page do look like Greek. Fluency and comprehension are out of the question. How can we, as teachers, fully understand the struggles our students go through on a daily basis? Well, I found a site that allows us to put ourselves in their shoes. It allows us to simulate their experience. It will blow you away!!!

You can share in this experience by clicking on the text pictured on the left. You can then click on the ‘Try It’ link and you will be well on your way to grasping the difficulties faced by our students. Hopefully understanding what they go through will lead to awareness and this will awareness will improve our instructional practices which in turn will improve our students’ learning.

Hope this has a profound effect on how you teach.

Please let me know how the exercises affected your thoughts about struggling readers.

Follow this link for an unforgettable experience:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/attention.html

The Fun Begins

So the ICT course is over but the fun has just begun. To some of us the idea of using our newly learnt technology to teach literacy to our students might be a bit daunting. The thought that we really don’t have a choice does nothing to ease the pressure either. There’s no getting around it, we have to be aware of the uses of the technology and how it is constantly changing. We need to ensure that it’s integrated into our lessons so at the end of the day our students have spent enough time interacting with the technological tools to which they were exposed.
There’s no need to be intimidated. Here are some tips I came across to get you started.

1.PREPARE

There is nothing worse than an ill prepared lesson. Students begin to make noise and play. The rhythm of the lesson is lost and our objectives are not achieved. Know what you are doing and how you are going to do it.

2.RUN IT THROUGH

Remember what Ms Wood Jackson said repeatedly? Test run the technology before your lesson. Yes it is SUPPOSED to work but these things have a mind of their own. Check to ensure the equipment you need is working and available.

3.USE TECHNOLOGY WITH A PURPOSE

This leaves the students no time to get into trouble on the computer. Know which website you want them to visit, and what you want them to do there. Provide them with headphones so they can turn up the volume without distracting others.

Remember technology can be fun in spite of the related headaches. Go brave!!

The 'Slow' Learner and Electronic Books

All teachers know that many students with learning disabilities are not found in what some term 'special ' schools but in our primary and secondary schools. Typically these are the ones who fell through the cracks or should I say gaps in our education system and never received the specialised help needed for perform well academically. What do we do when faced with these students in our classrooms? One year ago we would have come up with numerous suggestions,but it would have taken a bit of thought. Now, the answers are as clear as day. We know of the joys of teacher made electronic books.

Electronic books are an excellent way to support students with disabilities. They expose students to sound, animation and interactive features which build on their prior knowledge and make it easier for them to develop positive attitudes toward reading. Those books, created by teachers for classroom use would serve to meet the needs of individual learners, focusing on weaknesses in vocabulary , comprehension and fluency.

In my research, I also came across an excellent website on digital storytelling. Its a great source of fresh ideas. I do hope you find it useful.

Here's the link: www.microsoft.com/education/teachers/guides/digital_storytelling.aspx

Impact of technology in the classroom

Hi fellow bloggers, I came across an informative video on the impact of technology on teaching and learning which I would like to share.

Concept Maps as an Assessment Tool

Hi fellow bloggers, I came across some literature on the use of concept maps as an assessment tool. It's a great way to trace, document and evaluate student learning and language acquisition.

According to Rice, Ryan and Samson (1998), there is a increasing tendency to replace traditional assessment with alternative assessment, such as concept maps for collecting information about student's ability and acquisition of knowledge.

Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson (1996) identify three characteristics of concept mapping assessment:

• a task that requires students to give evidence of possession of knowledge structure of a domain
• A format for student response
• a scoring system by which concept maps produced by students can be evaluated consistently and accurately.

These three measures ensure the concept map is an effective assessment tool.

Concept maps are assessed by comparing the one produced by the students to an expert map produced by the educator. This comparison allows the teacher to note what is understood and remembered by the student. Significant differences would inform what changes should be made in relation to how the material was taught to ensure that the students have a better understanding of the major concepts.

Web 2.0 Technology- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

How is it possible for teachers to embrace the potential of Web 2.0 Technology without short changing our children by shifting the focus from meaning and learning to the glorification of a tool?

No one can deny the impact that Web 2.0 Technology has had on our practice but I think we must be careful that the result of its use is not a passive classroom where there is less interaction among students and teachers , the focus on literacy is diminished and the emphasis is on the tool itself.

These tools have the potential to impact classrooms much like how television has impacted the way we arrange our living room furniture or where we eat our dinner. We need to ensure that we separate their entertainment value from the need to have students actively engaged in their learning. These tools should be used as a 'crutch'. They support good teaching and should be used to show what students have learnt or what they are learning. Let us not forget that the focus should be on best practice as when best practice is not the focus, but technology is, student learning is compromised.

A Silver Lining for Struggling Male Readers

I can shamelessly say that I have not been this excited in a long time. Blogs, wikis, concept mapping- I am being slowly seduced by it all. The potential for enhancing learning across key learning components are endless. The more I read, the greater the anticipation and the clearer it becomes. This knowledege of web 2.o technology holds a lot of promise for our boys who struggle with reading. They love opportunities to explore, find out, to discover what lies beneath. Boys are kinesthetic learners, they respond well to visual images which stimulate their learning. Web 2.0 technology would definitely assist their reading development.


The urge to spread the news is really strong. I share my new found knowledge with my peers, many of whom have never heard of Web 2.0 technology. So go on and tell someone, this is too important to remain covered under the layers of many years of not knowing. Ignorance is no longer bliss.

The following article provides insightful information on how technology can assist struggling male readers.

Me Read? No Way!
Pickup, Kathy. (2001). Closing the gap: Educating boys and girls.

If you can’t feed a hundred people then feed just one
Mother Theresa

Blogs- Great for Children

Very few would disagree that the face of education as we know it, has drastically changed with the advent of Web 2.0 technology. The radical changes have been embraced by educators and have been adopted for classroom use for the purpose of enriching the educational lives of our students. The core idea of these technologies is that users of the technology are not ‘sponges’ who absorb information passively, but are creators, ‘tweeking’ the technology to suit their intents and purposes as well as those around them. I recently came across a blog called 'Children as Bloggers' which gave great insight into how teachers can use blogging to enhance classroom experiences. It is important however to note that these tools should not be confused with excellent practice.
Some of the key ideas expressed are summarized as follows:
1. Blogging can result in the development of web comprehension and research skills.
2. Blogging allows the creator to write for authentic readers and audiences in contrast to writing for the teacher ‘as examiner.
3. Children can be taught to understand internet technology which they would use for communication and learning.
4. Children are engaged as creators not users.
5. As speakers of dialect, blogging provides an opportunity for children to practice a second language.
6. Children can communicate and share their ideas with others.

Boys vs. Reading- The Debate Continues

Our new Minister of Education, Mr. Tim Gopeesingh, recently commented on the performance of our students in the SEA examination. He was especially concerned about the drop in scores in the Language Arts component of the examination and cited falling literacy levels as one of the contributing factors. This is a continuation of an ongoing debate about the noticeable underachievement of male students, particularly in literacy at the primary level and has drawn the interest of all stakeholders in education.

According to Cole (1997), girls generally perform better than boys in writing, reading and vocabulary reasoning. Many girls indicate that they obtained a great deal of pleasure from reading. They also said that they like to read ‘long thick books’ (Gorman et al., 1988). The boys, on the other hand, expressed negative views of reading and writing. They said that they found reading to be boring.


The implications for best practice seem to be evident or are they? That fact the boys are less interested in reading is clear. We know that their interests differ with regard to their preferences in reading material. Do these facts inform our instructional practices in our nation's schools? I think they should if we are to stem reading failure among our children and create successful readers.

If you can't feed a hundred people then feed just one.
Mother Theresa




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Vacation Time

Finally, the long awaited July /August vacation is here. We have all toiled long and hard so the rest is well deserved. I do hope that our students would spend some time reading some great books and not be totally zombied' out in front of the television or whatever is their choice of entertainment. Parents too should spend some time with their kids. I know they still have to work but it is said that time is a created thing. It's important to maintain that parent/ child bond or pretty soon we don't recognise them anymore. Teachers, we too can spend some time reflecting on the last school year and make changes in the way we do things if we deem them necessary. I know many of us are working with students over the vacation. It's a great way to put what we are learning into practice. Be blessed.

Curriculum

I recently came across an article entitled ‘ Communication to Curriculum’ by Douglas Barnes. In this article he seeks to explain that curriculum cannot simply be what is planned in advance for students to learn. He says that language and learning are crucial elements of curriculum and that it is also a meeting of the minds between students and teachers that takes place within the walls of the classroom.

Sometimes we teachers believe that the curriculum is that pre-planned shopping list of goals and objectives to be achieved at all cost. It is the ‘bible’ or yardstick used to measure whether we have done what we set out to do. But is it really just that? What of the interests of our children? Do they have a say with regard to what is learned and how it is learned? Do the stakeholders in education hear and respect their voices?

Barnes postulates that curriculum is a dynamic entity. It is the talk and the body language by which meanings are explained. It is imperative that teachers encourage students to take ownership of their learning and structure learning in such a way that curriculum becomes a form of communication.

If you can’t feed a hundred people then feed just one
Mother Theresa

All About Me

I am Clevia Bedeau-Moore, a teacher with twenty years experience. Reading has always been one of my passions. I grew up in a home filled with books so reading came naturally. Sometimes it’s difficult to conceptualize the difficulties that many of our children face with regard to reading because we, as individuals, have the ability to read and do it well. These challenges faced by our learners have compelled me to search out ways to help them. Special Education training and now Reading Specialist training will definitely equip me with the skills to make a difference in the lives of my young charges. I may only be able to help one child at a time but it would mean one more young person who feels empowered to change our world.

If you can’t feed a hundred people then feed just one
Mother Theresa