Here's a great October reading activity! The "Candy Corn Contest" is a book about a boy who is trying to win a jar of candy corn from his teacher by guessing how many candies are in the jar. In the book the students get to enter guesses when they read a page from their library books. I read the book to my students, and then have them answer comprehension questions about each chapter. For each question they enter correctly, they get to enter an estimate into the draw. Whoever guesses the correct amount (or the closest) wins the jar of candy!
The author discussed how they used an app called audioboom to improve student fluency by having them record books. I loved the idea, and so now the grade sixes are embarking on a quest! Over the course of the school year, you will start to see QR code appearing inside the back cover of the library books. When scanned on an iPad, students will be brought to an audio recording of the book being read. Grade six students will be recording the audio to help them practice their fluency and expression.
The reason we have decided to start creating audio recordings of the books is so that some of the lower students in our classrooms might still be able to listen to the book if there is no one available to read with them that day. All they will need is an ipad with a QR scan app and their headphones. Also, we know that Daily 5/CAFE has students listening to reading as a part of it, and that many of our Div I classes are using this program. Right now, we are going to be focusing on books at the 1-2 levels, and then working up from there.
So, keep your eyes posted for these books! When students record a new audio book, they will be our database on our Google Site. This is where we will be keeping track of the titles we have recorded. The link is below
PS: If you happen to have a title in your room that we have done a recording for, feel free to print of the QR code and tape it in your book as well!
P.S.S. Teachers if you are interested in having your kids record audiobooks, let me know and I can show you how to do it and give you access to the folders etc. The more the merrier!!
In my class this year we are doing something called "Candy Crush Friday!". Every Friday before lunch I give the students five questions, covering a variety of things that we have learnt about throughout the week. Each question that the student answers correctly earns them one candy. They have to crush the answers in order to earn the candy! Sometimes I have candies that are all worth one point. Other times I've had a variety of candy and made some worth more points than others. By doing this I am able to get an idea of who understood the major concepts from the week. And as an added bonus, the kids absolutely love doing this! They remind me about it all week to make sure that I have the questions ready to go Friday :)
Last year I tried using a regular word wall, but I wasn't using it regularly. This year I decided to try something new. We are using a word wall that focuses on word families.
We pick a common sound like "ight" and as a class come up with words that would fit into this family. The kids are pretty good at creating the words when they have the sound. We come up with eight and then pick two words to focus on. We define them and then the students are responsible for creating a sentence using the word. This also helps review proper sentence structure.
In October, grade six takes a turn for the creepy and becomes involved in a full out zombie mathapocalypse. Being the cruel teacher I am, I have been building their anticipation for the past week or so by subtly referencing it, taping up printed off zombies in their lockers, etc. They have even started asking the kids from last year for their advice and info! What they don't know is that we are going to be integrating mathematical concepts and skills into a game format to engage them in their learning! For the past few days I have also been giving the kids "ZCoins" for demonstrating perseverance in math, as well as sharing their mathematical thinking. I haven't told them what they are for, but they have been discussing the fact they probably have something to do with the mathapocalpyse.
Usually we begin on October 1st. On Day 1, I start off by playing an emergency broadcast on the smartboard:
I also tape a Newspaper article to their lockers with a bit of information to pique their interest and tie in some literacy:
At this point, I still haven't really given them any information, but they are dying to find out what is happening! Hook, line and sinker!
To start, I show students all the supplies in the Warehouse that they will be trying to obtain. This same presentation is how I keep track of student supplies. As they earn them, I cut them from the supply pages and paste them on the individual students' page at the end.
Before we get into any math, the kids are given an introduction sheet to get them thinking about their strategy for the game.
From here, we dive into some math. Students design bunkers using area, perimeter and volume.
As students collect supplies, they are responsible for recording their data on a graph
Also, because we are just winding up a unit on patterning, we complete a table of values as the mathapocalpyse goes on. Each day the number of zombies increases by 2Z+3
Each week, students receive updates on the apocalypse, and depending on their supplies, they will either live or become a zombie. If they become a zombie, they can steal supplies from classmates instead of getting them from me.
We also connect probability in by having the kids spin a spinner every week to decide their location on our map. We post their locations on our bulletin board. However, the only catch is that if they have a map as one of their supplies, they have access to a digital map that we update with clues specific to the week to help them survive (ex. there is a 1/6 chance of a zombie attach at the forest this week vs a 4/6 chance at the hospital). Sometimes I have to change the weekly updates if it means that all the students will become zombies, but it usually works out ok.
This year I am also integrating Twitter. I created an account @zmathapocalypse that will be tweeting the updates out to my class. The kids have a lot of fun during this game, and it really does help improve their math skills, while touching on curricular concepts we need to learn.
The link below is to a more comprehensive typed up explantation I did last year.
Pam was asking me this morning about R&W gold and other accessibility tools to use with Chrome, and so I thought I would share a few. We all have those students who struggle with basic literacy skills (reading and writing) that can make independent work a struggle once they reach division II. Since we can't help them every minute of the day, it is useful to leverage technology to teach them strategies for being independent when the situation warrants it. (Especially in science and social where we aren't necessarily assessing these reading and writing skills, but rather working on concept knowledge).
In Google Docs
Read and Write Gold (Download extension from the chrome store)
Reads the text students have typed back to them
Also works on Blogger as it turns out! Worth trying out to see where else it works on the web.
Tools: Voice typing
Speech to text program
Add-on: Speech recognition
Speech to text program
Add-on: Kaizena Mini
Leave voice feedback for students on their work
Chrome extensions
1. Speak it- reads text
2. ISpeech- reads texts
2. Announcify ( removes distractions and highlights a paragraph at a time)
3. Clearly- opens up the site without distractions
You can also download an extension called ChromeVox, but it can be really irritating because it reads EVERYTHING since it is designed for the visually impaired.
Other Tools and Tips
You can click on the little microphone beside the search box to use the voice search in Google Chrome
Sadly, Google removed the option to filter searches by reading ability :(
You can create custom search engines (cse.google.com) so that when students are searching you can ensure the resources they are getting as a result of their queries are in kid friendly language and at the appropriate level.
IPad
Voice typing in Chrome and in Google Docs using Siri
Food for Thought
- I created a bunch of projects using Slides, and I can't find a tool that will consistently read them to students. However, if I had created it in Docs, I would have easily been able to find a tool to have the text read to students. So... it is a good idea to reflect on the projects and the ability level of the students and how they will be able to access resources independently and structure your projects around that to save yourself headaches!
