I finally got onto www. funbrain.com.! The school wouldn't let me on this site. I had to go to my home computer to make this work. It was worth the wait! My Kindergarten class would like this site. It has flash arcades, math, reading, playground games, (I went to the Kindergarten section and played a game of catching fish), web books, comics, and movies.
In the Reading section I clicked on Tess's Tree for younger students. It had games, arts & crafts, movie reviews, learning activities, free software and printable worksheets.
There was a funblog for students to participate in raising funds for pennies for police dogs.
The teachers section lists gradebook, standards, curriculum, homework, quizlab, and teacher vision.
I would use this site for my Kindergartners to use as a fun Friday activity. I would need to get to the computer lab early to get all 17 computers where they needed to be in Tess's Tree.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Make up report for missing class on 2/28/08
I watched the video of class on 2/28/08. You presented a study of Anette LaRue entitled "Home Advantages." It studied families in a working class school versus middle class and upper class schools. Qualitative differences were discussed.
There was a sense of separation between home and school. Parents felt a lack of confidence, lack of information, and a lack of initiative (special requests). An uncritical/critical category showed that parents were not critical of the academics of school but were very critical of lunchroom procedures.
The differences between the families were competence, confidence, income/material resources, demands at work, and networks (the amounts of information about the system). The class then discussed the implications of these findings. Some teachers wanted parents to receive more information about student progress. A secondary teacher wanted high school students to accept more responsibility for their grades and work.
Urban versus rural issues were mentioned. There may be less social connections in urban areas. Are these problems or realities? I think these are realities. I always contact my parents after testing and let them know what they need to work on with their children. I use letters and phone calls to keep the home and school connection strong.
Chapter 4 in the Leu book was reviewed. The discussion on the chapter was prefaced by three questions. What were the key ideas? What are the websites you visited and what impressed you about those websites? What activities would you like to try? Leonard stated that emails and chat rooms have no place in school. A second grade teacher explained a webquest that she designed for her students about penguins.
Ed Fry's material on "Increasing Fluency With High Frequency Word Phrases," was presented. It included comprehension and vocabulary activities and lessons for grades 1-6. I like Dr. Fry's word lists. This is a site I will definitely check out.
The International Children's Digital Library website was shown on the screen. I would like to peruse this site.
The Xu book was discussed. The teacher in the chapter discussed the step by step process of designing popular culture text units using the standards and cross-curricular integration. There were many connections being made by students in this chapter.
The teacher had to do research on her students' interests and then learn about rap music. This gained the respect and trust of students. The checklists were helpful resources.
Chapter 5 of the Leu book examined English and the Language Arts curriculum. Copyrighting issues, technology vs. interpersonal skills, and comparison/contrast issues were mentioned. Wikki, and my spaces sites were reviewed. The teach.web site for creating classroom home pages was perused. I used this site for my classroom webpage for project 2. I decided it was more fun than a blog page for my parents. We will see how many parents actually visit my web address!
There was a sense of separation between home and school. Parents felt a lack of confidence, lack of information, and a lack of initiative (special requests). An uncritical/critical category showed that parents were not critical of the academics of school but were very critical of lunchroom procedures.
The differences between the families were competence, confidence, income/material resources, demands at work, and networks (the amounts of information about the system). The class then discussed the implications of these findings. Some teachers wanted parents to receive more information about student progress. A secondary teacher wanted high school students to accept more responsibility for their grades and work.
Urban versus rural issues were mentioned. There may be less social connections in urban areas. Are these problems or realities? I think these are realities. I always contact my parents after testing and let them know what they need to work on with their children. I use letters and phone calls to keep the home and school connection strong.
Chapter 4 in the Leu book was reviewed. The discussion on the chapter was prefaced by three questions. What were the key ideas? What are the websites you visited and what impressed you about those websites? What activities would you like to try? Leonard stated that emails and chat rooms have no place in school. A second grade teacher explained a webquest that she designed for her students about penguins.
Ed Fry's material on "Increasing Fluency With High Frequency Word Phrases," was presented. It included comprehension and vocabulary activities and lessons for grades 1-6. I like Dr. Fry's word lists. This is a site I will definitely check out.
The International Children's Digital Library website was shown on the screen. I would like to peruse this site.
The Xu book was discussed. The teacher in the chapter discussed the step by step process of designing popular culture text units using the standards and cross-curricular integration. There were many connections being made by students in this chapter.
The teacher had to do research on her students' interests and then learn about rap music. This gained the respect and trust of students. The checklists were helpful resources.
Chapter 5 of the Leu book examined English and the Language Arts curriculum. Copyrighting issues, technology vs. interpersonal skills, and comparison/contrast issues were mentioned. Wikki, and my spaces sites were reviewed. The teach.web site for creating classroom home pages was perused. I used this site for my classroom webpage for project 2. I decided it was more fun than a blog page for my parents. We will see how many parents actually visit my web address!
Project 1
My first project consisted of evaluating a website every week and responding to another person's blog site.
Project 2
My Project 2 was creating my own classroom webpage. My web address is http://TeacherWeb.com/WY/OregonTrailSchool/Mrs. Bowen/
Monday, April 21, 2008
Reading Response 4/21
Leu 11
This chapter focused on the ways teachers can incorporate equitable use of the Internet by all students, especially those students with special needs. Developing a schedule for Internet use, and monitoring students on the computers, are ways teachers can ensure equitable Internet use for their classes. Boys tend to monopolize the computers more than girls in my classroom so I have to monitor my three learning center computers carefully.
My students do love to help other students and show me what they are learning on the Internet at starfall.com. They are always asking me if we are going to the computer lab.
I haven't tried using partners in the computer lab, but it is something I am willing to experiment with.
I liked the resources that were listed in promoting equitable use of the Internet.
The Internet can give special needs students an opportunity to shine before others in the class as long as the teacher has spent enough time training them on the skill they need to teach their classmates. Directories for student inclusion, and additional resources for visually impaired and hearing impaired students were mentioned.
My mother has lost most of her hearing and the doctors do not know why this has occurred. So the issue of cochlear implants is something I want to investigate further.
The last part of the chapter talked about directories for students and teachers who are experiencing issues in the classroom such as autism, ADD, learning disabillities, and challenging behaviors.
Internet Workshops, Internet Inquiries, Internet Projects, and Webquests for special needs students were discussed with websites given to address each area.
I don't have any special needs students in my class this year, but these resources will be helpful this summer as I team teach our upper elementary students that are in our special education classes.
Cummins
This article is about an oral history project that James constructed for his seventh grade students. The students had to pursue individual investigations around two questions. The two questions were "What kind of history can we find in our families?' and "Where do we come from?" Reports were written on their findings.
European students were able to find out more information than non-European students. I suppose this is because Europe keeps better records on their citizens.
Students learned that information on the Internet is not complete or always reliable.
The family tree model did not work for all students who were not in traditional families. There were empty boxes. James showed his students how to use Appleworks draw program to draw a family tree that fit their family dynamics. This is a fantastic idea to show students how they can customize the Internet to fit their projects.
During the family interviews the students designed questions, took notes, organized information, and tape recorded the interviews. Taping an interview helps you to remember details later on. These are good strategies to teach students.
Students were able to interview other relatives around the globe. They came to class with more questions and information.
Each student shared their stories in different ways. James used a video recorder to film each student giving their oral history presentation. An imovie was made from this recording. Parents came to the classroom's open house and were thrilled with the imovie they saw. This project, imovie, and open house was a very effective way to connect the classroom to the home.
After the project James noticed his students' study skills improved. Their critical thinking and analysis were more sophisticated. Probing questions were posed and discussed in depth. Students made text to self, text to text, and text to world connections. This was a well designed project that addressed a multitude of standards.
Cummins Part Two
The Almond Avenue staff and the Fairmont staff developed a biographical joint writing activity project for their 1-3 grade students to complete together. Students worked in pairs to interview each other and then write their classmates' biography. The students' biographies were published and included in the library.
Students at each school were paired up with the opposing school and then did their interviews via email. These biographies were used to introduce their classmates to their distant partner.
The students then proceeded to sort their library's biographies by using a data collection form that had columns for gender, ethnicity,and profession. Students counted and sorted the school's biographies in the library. Fairness issues were approached by listing how many books were about each culture. The results showed that most biographies were about men, caucasians, and dead people.
Students then went to the main city library and found that their findings were the same. 70% of the biographies were about dead white men.
Letters were written to the main library to request more biographies on women and other people of color.
This was a very meaningful unit on utilizing the content areas with literacy. The time and detail work was massive for these students and teachers. It is nice to see a social issue that concerns the school addressed with a plan of action to remediate the social injustices of the gender and ethnicity issues.
This chapter focused on the ways teachers can incorporate equitable use of the Internet by all students, especially those students with special needs. Developing a schedule for Internet use, and monitoring students on the computers, are ways teachers can ensure equitable Internet use for their classes. Boys tend to monopolize the computers more than girls in my classroom so I have to monitor my three learning center computers carefully.
My students do love to help other students and show me what they are learning on the Internet at starfall.com. They are always asking me if we are going to the computer lab.
I haven't tried using partners in the computer lab, but it is something I am willing to experiment with.
I liked the resources that were listed in promoting equitable use of the Internet.
The Internet can give special needs students an opportunity to shine before others in the class as long as the teacher has spent enough time training them on the skill they need to teach their classmates. Directories for student inclusion, and additional resources for visually impaired and hearing impaired students were mentioned.
My mother has lost most of her hearing and the doctors do not know why this has occurred. So the issue of cochlear implants is something I want to investigate further.
The last part of the chapter talked about directories for students and teachers who are experiencing issues in the classroom such as autism, ADD, learning disabillities, and challenging behaviors.
Internet Workshops, Internet Inquiries, Internet Projects, and Webquests for special needs students were discussed with websites given to address each area.
I don't have any special needs students in my class this year, but these resources will be helpful this summer as I team teach our upper elementary students that are in our special education classes.
Cummins
This article is about an oral history project that James constructed for his seventh grade students. The students had to pursue individual investigations around two questions. The two questions were "What kind of history can we find in our families?' and "Where do we come from?" Reports were written on their findings.
European students were able to find out more information than non-European students. I suppose this is because Europe keeps better records on their citizens.
Students learned that information on the Internet is not complete or always reliable.
The family tree model did not work for all students who were not in traditional families. There were empty boxes. James showed his students how to use Appleworks draw program to draw a family tree that fit their family dynamics. This is a fantastic idea to show students how they can customize the Internet to fit their projects.
During the family interviews the students designed questions, took notes, organized information, and tape recorded the interviews. Taping an interview helps you to remember details later on. These are good strategies to teach students.
Students were able to interview other relatives around the globe. They came to class with more questions and information.
Each student shared their stories in different ways. James used a video recorder to film each student giving their oral history presentation. An imovie was made from this recording. Parents came to the classroom's open house and were thrilled with the imovie they saw. This project, imovie, and open house was a very effective way to connect the classroom to the home.
After the project James noticed his students' study skills improved. Their critical thinking and analysis were more sophisticated. Probing questions were posed and discussed in depth. Students made text to self, text to text, and text to world connections. This was a well designed project that addressed a multitude of standards.
Cummins Part Two
The Almond Avenue staff and the Fairmont staff developed a biographical joint writing activity project for their 1-3 grade students to complete together. Students worked in pairs to interview each other and then write their classmates' biography. The students' biographies were published and included in the library.
Students at each school were paired up with the opposing school and then did their interviews via email. These biographies were used to introduce their classmates to their distant partner.
The students then proceeded to sort their library's biographies by using a data collection form that had columns for gender, ethnicity,and profession. Students counted and sorted the school's biographies in the library. Fairness issues were approached by listing how many books were about each culture. The results showed that most biographies were about men, caucasians, and dead people.
Students then went to the main city library and found that their findings were the same. 70% of the biographies were about dead white men.
Letters were written to the main library to request more biographies on women and other people of color.
This was a very meaningful unit on utilizing the content areas with literacy. The time and detail work was massive for these students and teachers. It is nice to see a social issue that concerns the school addressed with a plan of action to remediate the social injustices of the gender and ethnicity issues.
Website Review 4/21
I was referred to www.readersa-z.com by another teacher in our class. The sections are home, all books, guided reading, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, poetry, alphabet, assessment, and more resources. This website has thousands of downloadable readers that are leveled and organized by skill. There are leveled readers, benchmark books, running records, lessons, worksheets, a phonics program, phonemic awareness materials, poetry books, comic books, alphabet materials, high frequency word books, vocabulary books, vocabulary activities, fluency readings, scripts for readers theater, and reading assessments.
These materials are appropriate for grades K-6, ESL/ELL, special education and remedial reading programs. The downloadable books are based on the standards and are outcome oriented.
I downloaded four sample books and I plan on joining this website. If my principal will not pay for it I will join personally. My classroom is short on books to send home so this is an invaluable resource for me. I will use it often. My school district uses the Rigby leveling system but I can look at the letters and books to figure out which ones are appropriate for each of my three reading groups.
If you teach elementary school I would highly recommend this website!
These materials are appropriate for grades K-6, ESL/ELL, special education and remedial reading programs. The downloadable books are based on the standards and are outcome oriented.
I downloaded four sample books and I plan on joining this website. If my principal will not pay for it I will join personally. My classroom is short on books to send home so this is an invaluable resource for me. I will use it often. My school district uses the Rigby leveling system but I can look at the letters and books to figure out which ones are appropriate for each of my three reading groups.
If you teach elementary school I would highly recommend this website!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Reading Response 4/14
Manyak Article
This article supports the Auerbach piece about providing text that taps into diverse learners' cultural heritage and funds of knowledge. The storybook reading study with a Spanish speaking family shows that when a book related to the Puentes' funds of knowledge, interpretive behavior resulted, which linked background knowledge and text to life experiences. Higher level thinking and more complex comprehension occurred.
Texts that explained valued customs from the Mother's childhood background elicited more original book interactions with her children. She transmitted cultural values, life to text, and text to life connections with her storybook reading to her daughter and sons.
On the other side of the spectrum, when books did not address the family's funds of knowledge or cultural heritage, the learning was adult directed and fact based with the learning being directed towards lower level literal comprehension of the text.
I think providing story books that tap into the sociocultural realities of diverse language learners would be helpful in providing more meaningful literacy engagement and comprehension. However, Patrick did say that he did not complete the research due to going back to teach full time. This supports my previous point on the Auerbach article that states who has the time to research the funds of knowledge of diverse language learners while teaching school full time?
Leu 10
The Internet provides different websites and directories for teachers and students to increase multicultural understanding. Using these resources can promote an appreciation of student diversity and create a classroom community in the process. Online communications with other cultures can create understanding and respect for others that are different from ourselves. It may cause us to re-evaluate stereotypes we have acquired.
There are directories for increasing multicultural understanding for students and teachers in this chapter.
Finding a classroom to correspond with that speaks the same language as ESL students can empower them and give these students a valued role in the classroom.
Radio stations from another country can be tapped into by using a Stations guide location at RealAudio. Pairing an ESL student with an English speaking student during these sorts of projects can encourage linguistic capabilities. I think this would be fun and meaningful for older students.
Sites for supporting ESL students were listed.
Internet Workshop ideas for supporting multicultural understanding were given. I would like to check out the Chinese calendar for my Kindergartners. We study the English calendar and this would be a good compare and contrast activity.
Ideas for social action were explored. I think it is important to move from understanding to action to accomplish community service. This gives the children a sense of self esteem and accomplishment. It shows them they can make a positive difference in the lives of other people.
Internet Inquiry and Internet Project ideas were discussed for promoting multicultural understanding as well.
I would like to go on the Cultural Quest World Tour site to visit various countries and expose my students to games, museums, and recipes from other cultures.
This article supports the Auerbach piece about providing text that taps into diverse learners' cultural heritage and funds of knowledge. The storybook reading study with a Spanish speaking family shows that when a book related to the Puentes' funds of knowledge, interpretive behavior resulted, which linked background knowledge and text to life experiences. Higher level thinking and more complex comprehension occurred.
Texts that explained valued customs from the Mother's childhood background elicited more original book interactions with her children. She transmitted cultural values, life to text, and text to life connections with her storybook reading to her daughter and sons.
On the other side of the spectrum, when books did not address the family's funds of knowledge or cultural heritage, the learning was adult directed and fact based with the learning being directed towards lower level literal comprehension of the text.
I think providing story books that tap into the sociocultural realities of diverse language learners would be helpful in providing more meaningful literacy engagement and comprehension. However, Patrick did say that he did not complete the research due to going back to teach full time. This supports my previous point on the Auerbach article that states who has the time to research the funds of knowledge of diverse language learners while teaching school full time?
Leu 10
The Internet provides different websites and directories for teachers and students to increase multicultural understanding. Using these resources can promote an appreciation of student diversity and create a classroom community in the process. Online communications with other cultures can create understanding and respect for others that are different from ourselves. It may cause us to re-evaluate stereotypes we have acquired.
There are directories for increasing multicultural understanding for students and teachers in this chapter.
Finding a classroom to correspond with that speaks the same language as ESL students can empower them and give these students a valued role in the classroom.
Radio stations from another country can be tapped into by using a Stations guide location at RealAudio. Pairing an ESL student with an English speaking student during these sorts of projects can encourage linguistic capabilities. I think this would be fun and meaningful for older students.
Sites for supporting ESL students were listed.
Internet Workshop ideas for supporting multicultural understanding were given. I would like to check out the Chinese calendar for my Kindergartners. We study the English calendar and this would be a good compare and contrast activity.
Ideas for social action were explored. I think it is important to move from understanding to action to accomplish community service. This gives the children a sense of self esteem and accomplishment. It shows them they can make a positive difference in the lives of other people.
Internet Inquiry and Internet Project ideas were discussed for promoting multicultural understanding as well.
I would like to go on the Cultural Quest World Tour site to visit various countries and expose my students to games, museums, and recipes from other cultures.
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