Since my last post, I have finished the Concurrent Credential program. I chose to get a bit more in-class experience by substituting and volunteering in my own childrens’ classes before applying for positions. Last year was a whirlwind of information and experiences. I am enjoying the “down-time” and learning more with each class I visit. I will be on the hunt for jobs for the 2011-2012 school year, so wish me luck!
I hesitate to tell, for I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t read it. However, I will tell you that it is well worth reading to yourself, with your children or class. My son read it over the summer and loved it. When he started fifth grade this fall, he was pleasantly surprised to find out that his class would be reading it for Social Studies. He loved reading it again and didn’t give away any information to his classmates. His teacher even allowed me to share my Talking Power Point with the class!
So to answer….what happened? Well you’ll just have to read The Sign of the Beaver yourself and find out. Let’s just say that there are many things to learn from this book. Enjoy!
As part of my student teaching experience I had to teach solo for two weeks. During this two weeks I focused on Chapter 16 of The Sign of the Beaver. I introduced Chapter 16 with a talking power point of focus and academic vocabulary words. To build fluency and further comprehension the class re-read a section of chapter 16 chorally. To access and build background knowledge, the students made predictions about Chapter 16 on their KWLA charts. To further comprehension, the students made connections between cause and effect on graphic organizers. They compared and contrasted the main characters, Matt and Attean on Venn diagrams. The activities served a dual purpose, to further comprehension and assess their knowledge.
While the main purpose of reading this novel to the class is to model fluent reading, we are doing many activities to broaden their comprehension of it. As you know I introduced the book by showing the Talking Power Point which addressed vocabulary words. We also made a KWLA chart which is still under construction as we are learning more things everyday about the book. On Friday, the students love coming up to the whiteboard and filling in a chart of title, setting, main characters and the plot. We have also made a Senses chart, which the students told me what they saw, felt, smelled, heard, and tasted by listening to the story. I will keep you posted on other activities that we will be doing.
My original focus of this BLOG was an interactive tool for the students I’m student-teaching, but this didn’t work so well. My current focus is to provide parents with “little bits” of information and resources for their children, and a small view of what we are doing in class. This BLOG will continue to evolve. I hope to someday make it interactive for my own class full of students.
This is the class that I’ve been student teaching in all semester. It is a neat-freak’s dream!! Due to some of the disabilities of our students, the class must be kept uncluttered so as not to overstimulate them. The students (and teachers) at this school are extremely fortunate to have multiple high tech. gadgets such as a document camera (shown in the picture). Our class has multiple computers and a portable cart filled with laptops which are used everyday by our class for Read 180 and available to other classes.
So far in Sign of the Beaver……Matt has been left to fend for himself and take care of their new settlement. He spends his days keeping weeds and crows out of the garden, catching fish, rabbits and birds for food, cooking his food and counting the days until his family returns. A stranger named Ben conned Matt out of a meal and a place to sleep. In the morning, Ben was gone and so was Matt’s only gun. After a bear broke into the cabin and took most of his cooking supplies including his treasured molasses, Matt risks stealing honey from a hive. This ended in Matt face submerged in a stream to escape more bee stings. He was rescued by an Indian man and taken back to his cabin to rest and heal from the thousands of stings and a sprang ankle he got running to the stream. To thank the Indian man, Matt offered his only book “Robinson Crusoe.” Rather than taking the book the Indian man made a “treaty” with Matt to teach his grandson, Attean, to read. Attean has great distaste for this white boy and his ways which makes the lessons quite difficult.
Recently, I learned about an amazing website for downloading scanned books. This website is called Bookshare (http://bookshare.org). It was specifically designed for people with certain disabilities that makes reading difficult to impossible.
It is quite easy to join Bookshare. You simply provide general information about yourself in the website. After joining you are required to download and print a form that a certifying professional must complete and send back. When this is received by Bookshare, you can start downloading books.
There are a few requirements to qualify for the free subscription. A person must have one of four disabilities. Visual impairments obviously cause an inability to read. Any physical disability that inhibits a person’s ability to hold a book or turn pages also qualifies. Learning and reading disabilities must be severe to qualify.
In regards to mild to moderate students in schools, Bookshare has opened a door to provide equal access to all content areas. Bookshare has four thousand textbooks scanned. In addition to this, eleven thousand children’s books and thirty thousand literature and fiction selections are available. The downloaded text books can be enlarged, color coded, highlighted and color of text and background can be changed. These are all strategies that will enable students with reading difficulties to access information. Using these strategies in addition to the ability to read so many different books gives the students the opportunity to improve their reading and enjoy printed material.
Students are not the only people that will benefit from and use Bookshare. Due the huge variety of subject covered from home and garden, military and even reference material, people of all ages will find something of interest to them. Since you can download up to one hundred books per month it will be used often.
To access Bookshare you must download a text reading software program. Bookshare scans the books into DAISY, a talking book format and BRF, a digital Braille format. These are readable with some software programs. Bookshare also provides two free voices. Since this is my first exposure to speech to text software, I had to do some research. After reviewing many programs, Text Aloud for a PC and Ghostreader for MAC seem to be the best. They were both under fifty dollars, read in original application, read internet, convert text to audio files, had a free trial and a pronunciation editor.
The best part about this website is that it has a special exemption I the U.S. copyright law that enables the “reproduction of publications into specialized formats for the disabled. Bookshare is the only e-Text site that is able to scan and share copyrighted material with others. Thanks to Bookshare, people with disabilities affecting their reading have access to more than sixty thousand digital books, textbooks, teacher-recommended reading, periodicals and assistive technology tools!
We are on Chapter three of “The Sign of the Beaver.” To further comprehension we filled in a graphic organizer about senses. The students told me what they had seen, felt, heard, tasted and smelled after I read chapter three. They heard leaves crunching, tasted johnny cakes and rabbit stew and saw a burly man with a red beard. To further their experience I made a Photo Story with pictures from a rendezvous. This particular rendezvous reflected housing, clothing, food, etc. from the 1700′s. “The Sign of the Beaver” took place in 1768. The Photo Story gave them a visual experience of the things Matt saw. Enjoy! PhotoStory1TheSignOftheBeaver
Like, Talking PowerPoints, PhotoStories have many uses in the classroom. Teachers can use them to show the process the students went through during a unit project for parents to view, to teach the months of the year, to enhance comprehension and much more. The students can make them as a report to show comprehension, or a presentation of information they’ve learned to share with other students.
To make a Photo Story simply download the free version from:
www.microsoft.com/…/digitalphotography/PhotoStory/default.mspx
After downloading Photo Story start it and follow the easy directions:
I am reading a great book to my class called “The Sign of the Beaver.” As an assignment for my Tech. class I made a Talking PowerPoint to introduce the book, academic vocabulary and key vocabulary. Enjoy!
This Talking Power Point was so easy to make and has so many uses! Teachers use them as lessons or to enhance them. Students can use them to make presenting their reports easier and more interesting.
To make a Power Point visit the link below, Power Point in the Classroom, for extensive step by step instructions:
