High-tech at High Speed

I came across these cartoons while searching the Web. I think they speak to what's happening around us and in our world as educators. We can no longer ignore that though it may be taking long to reach our individual classrooms, it is coming and our children are way ahead of us.

My last son is 2 years old, six years younger than Lemuel his second brother and 13 years younger than his eldest brother. My husband gives him his iPhone "to keep him quiet" in the car. Imagine my horror when I first say this occurance; after all this is a two-year-old who is bored quickly with one toy, dashes it to the ground and goes for another.

My husband observing my concern (to put it mildly) explains that Daniel will just get his Sesame Street videos, some back issues that my husband downloaded. I watched as the baby deftly used his little fingers to slide across the screen, touch the relevant icons to access "ABCD...Cookie Monster..." and sat laughing as the seen played out. When he had enough of that video, he didn't dash it to the ground, he went on to the next video.

Technology or Bayrum

Dust off the cobwebs people and embrace the technology. I mean do we really have a choice? I am beginning to feel that we don't. But, if we insist on staying in the now prehistoric age of "chalk (or whiteboard marker as the case may be) and talk, then bring out the Bayrum because rheumatism will set in and, in the wonderful words of my creole tongue, pain fuh so when you have to deal with dem chirren.

Check out this in your face scenario that I was personal witness to a few years ago.

We were off to attend a function with my sister-in-law. Dashing into the car Pearl realised that she had forgotten her digital camera. Pearl is a take-out-pictures-everywhere-you-go person, so she was in a bit of a state. Rather than turning the car around however, she opted to buy a disposal camera from the pharmacy; yes, the one you have to carry in to get the pictures "developed".

As she returned to the car my second son asked to see the camera. "Sure," replied Pearl and gave it to him. Excited, Lemuel opened the box and inspected the camera. After a few minutes he asked: "Auntie Pearl, where's the screen?" His aunt laughed heartily and replied: "No, honey, it's not a camera like that." Lemuel will be nine on September 2nd.

Anyone out there without screens? Then bring out the Bayrum!

Wonderful Creole

Reading the article that I refered to in my last blog caused me to think of my beautiful Creole language.

Ay ay. But meh boy getting well grown up.
Ay ay, but like ah forget meh pen.
Ay ay, like you going somewhere. Who yuh ask?

See how many times we can use "ay ay" (as in day) and it means so many different things? And the difference lies simply in the intonation of the voice. The first one of course you stretch out the ay. The second is short and sharp and the third goes high then low, this is the one used by parents a lot. That's Trinidad creole the best language in the world, at least that's my view.

Ever listen to television reports as they interview the protesters, or eyewitnesses? Rich, thick description that makes you feel as if you were there. And how about when one creole word replaces two standard English words? For example, Yuh going tuh town? means Are you going into town? Yuh = Are you. How then can we get the children to form the bridge between their core language and the language of exams – Standard English?

A teacher once told me that foreign language teachers no longer use students' errors to teach. You know how we take the errors and then show them what they wrote against what they should have written? She says it's more productive to simply translate on the board in the Standard English what they say in Creole eventually they will begin to make the connection. I guess in this way, we use their own language to teach them and not make them feel as if it is offensive. Any other ideas?

Teaching Literacy through Talk

Talking into Literacy the Early Years (Button & Millward) explores the link between speaking, listening and literacy. In a nutshell the article looks at how children's talk can be used to teach them literacy skills.

"It is not possible to attend to the children's reading and writing ... without attending to their talk, and in attending to their talk we are able to cultivate their development as literate members of society."

This quote from the article raises an interesting view. It is not something that we have not heard before but I think the article explores it in a depth that I have not seen elsewhere. My interest in the article lies in us being teachers to students whose first language is creole. The article makes a few suggestions which, though it does not specifically talk to creole speakers, may give us ideas on what to do.

1. Provide opportunities for children to talk purposefully.


2. Help children to talk as effectively in school as they do at home by giving a higher status to talk in the classroom.


3. Help them to use language in ways which allows them to express their interests and concerns, which will enable them to take a positive and constructive part in the presentation of classroom experience.


4. Show the children that we as teachers are interested in them and their use of language.


5. Help them to talk thoughtfully and attend to the language they use. This can be done through discussions, conversations, accounts, presentations, reading , anecdotes and formal stories. By using these media too, teachers can help children get in touch with the literate form of the language.

Now that you I have captured your interest, read the full text at http://dro.dur.ac.uk/1865/1/1865.pdf and give your views.

Add some life to phonics

On Friday I created my first e-book. I thoroughly enjoyed creating that e-book, as simple as it was. The exercise showed me how life could be added to some of those sometimes boring phonics lessons. Try as I might, somehow those lessons always seem drab. Now that we have learnt how to create our own e-books the future seems brighter for phonetic instruction.

Because I teach secondary school, my clients are all teenagers, most of whom function at the remedial level. One of the major challenges we face as English teachers in this scenario is trying to teach adolescents phonics. They see this as "baby work" even when some of them are unable to decode basic three-letter words and set up barriers to learning.

The problem, I believe, is two-fold: most of them have younger brothers, sisters and cousins who are doing this at work at the primary level, Infants. The second problem is they remember doing the work when they, themselves were in Infants and so now as teenagers think of it as demeaning, it seems. The problem may never be eradicated totally but as teachers and Reading Specialists we have to find ways to make this critical element more interesting and less “babyish”.

While creating my e-book I thought: cartoons. Children at every age love cartoons. If we can make phonic cartoons would we be able to breakdown some of those barriers? We can take the same information from those phonics texts, add some pictures, add our voices, or use another voice depending on the effect you want, get those letters to shine in different colours for emphasis and we're teaching phonics in today's world! I'm almost certain my students would appreciate the instruction more than what pertains now.


Visit BBC Words and Pictures to get ideas on how to use technology to teach phonetic instruction and more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/phonics/sandcastle/index.shtml

A picture is worth a...

Pictures, Pictures! I love looking at pictures of my family especially the children. Pictures capture moments in time:

“Ha! Ha! remember when Daddy was trying to be Superman... all that mud. We had to throw away the shorts.”

And mothers favourite - BABY PICTURES: “Ooh! So cute, trying to use the potty; it’s a good thing it was empty!”

Or: “Here he is brushing his teeth, and the sink, and the wall...”

Oh, yeah pictures bring back memories. We can almost instantly remember a moment in time when we look at pictures.

I was thinking of this association i.e. memory and pictures when my classmate was helping me to understand how to use storyboards. I realised that storyboards have the potential to combine pictures with text to make learning both informative, entertaining and with lasting effect. We have learnt this from comic books. Super heroes and villains we remember them all, so that when we go to see the movie we come out arguing that this or that character was not portrayed as he or she should have been because “the comic did not have it so.”

Translate that into the classroom. By its very nature of the storyboard can be used not just as a lesson-planning tool but to teach interactive lessons on writing, vocabulary and even spelling, and all through the aid of pictures. For example if a child were to associate a word with a picture, I'm wondering if it will have a more lasting impact on his memory than given in a list. I feel that by association he will remember the picture more easily than the word so if both are combined, a memory of one may trigger the other.

Still pondering, so share your thoughts and check out these sites:

http://teaching-strategies-mentorship.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_is_a_storyboard

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3750735ww2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3750735

The future of reading?

“Electronic books, with their text-to-speech capabilities, animation, and interactivity can boost the confidence of students with disabilities, and encourage their fluency, comprehension, and language skills” (Rhodes & Milby, 2007).

This quote came from a journal article by Rhodes and Milby in the The Reading Teacher. I believe, just the idea of having to look at a screen peaks students’ interest – it comes with the technological age that we are in. It is why the use of e-books is having so much success in classrooms. This was the case of one Special Education Teacher, Brittany Dyer. Read her contribution on http://www.slideshare.net/lilbritbabe10/ebooks-335962559625

Because of the difficulty of getting students to read on their own, her classes often consisted of her reading aloud while the students “follow” in their books or a student may volunteer to read. She reached a point of frustration: “I was getting tired of telling kids to pick up their books!” Sounds familiar? I’m sure it does. She eventually, and quite accidentally, came across an electronic version of another novel she intended to read to her class. At the touch of a button she downloaded energy, excitement and interest into her class.

Several points came to the fore about the advantages of e-books, I’ll highlight a few:

• enhances student confidence
• interactive activities (Rhodes & Milby, 2007)
• brings lessons to life
• connects technology to learning

From our own ideas and readings on e-books do you think that e-books will become the future of reading? What say you?

The articles below give some useful and interesting information on e-books and the use of technology in the classroom that I think may be beneficial to us all.

Rhodes, J. A., & Milby, T. M. (2007). Teacher-created electronic books: integrating technology

to support readers with disabilities [Electronic version]. The Reading Teacher, 61, 255-259.

http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/some-articles-about-technology-in-education/

http://www.slideshare.net/lilbritbabe10/ebooks-3359625

Morrison, K. (2007). Implementation of assistive computer technology: A model for school

systems [Electronic version]. International Journal of Special Education, 22, 83-95.

Books have e-volved

My second son will be nine years old in September. He is an excellent reader. When he gets to the library to borrow books, however, he has a ritual. He scans the shelf for book covers that may catch his eye then he flips through the books and continues this ritual until he has found three books that he finds "interesting". What is he flipping the pages for? Pictures! If the book does not have an equal number of pictures to pages then he looks for another book.

At first I worried that he was only choosing “baby books” but when I observed what was going on I started searching for books with pictures - lots of pictures.... and lots of words. The plan worked. Book after book he consumes. It never bothers him the length of the books, just as long as there are pictures in them.

I have observed that reluctant or struggling readers are intimidated by, mainly:
a. books that are grey i.e. too many words
b. books that seem too long. The first thing that this category of readers does is to “assess” the book by looking at the number of pages in the books.
c. books with too many words per page: “So much reading, Miss?”

I am happy that we are learning how to create e-books. I see them having several advantages over traditional books.

1. They can be customized to suit your learning needs.
2. Texts can be adapted through pictures and words per page to suit your students.
3. By their nature, story length may not be such an issue as with regular books.
4. They are engaging.

Pictured above is a story from The Living Books series by Mercer Mayer. This series features a number of enjoyable and interactive e-books that children love. They can even give us ideas about how to create our own e-books. More on these and other e-books in my next blog.

Chin Up. We have been that way before!

At times during this course I have felt overwhelmed, as if I am not understanding fast enough. This blog is to remind us all of something I realised on Tuesday while watching my peers make their presentations on concept mapping.

I admire Primary school teachers. The things those teachers can do with Bristol board and markers are amazing! They have the neatest handwritings AND on a blackboard with NO LINES using chalk! Me? Thank God for computers. I digress, but think about it: all those charts "Miss" created that decorated our classroom walls, a visual depiction of some lesson or the other, isn't it similar to what we are learning using Webspiration?

As I looked at my peers present their work it hit me that this is similar to what I see on my son's classroom walls and what I remember on my own walls at primary school. Teachers used charts to depict certain lesson points. The difference now is that our students can play a greater role in the creation of these charts which were before all done by "Miss" for our benefit. With Webspiration and concept-mapping students can not only become more involved but "Miss" can enlist the help of other "Misses" by the touch of a button at any time convenient to us.

So be encouraged colleagues we have been that way before (did someone say prior knowledge?) but now our markers and Bristol board have been replaced by the mouse and screen. And as a teachers of mine would say: "You eh the most duncey one in the world, so yuh go get it."

Conceptualize this!

Webspiration gave me inspiration. So here it is.
Continuing from the last post of teachers as collaborators, I thought: Let’s now bring in the concept map concept, (sounds funny but it is grammatically correct). So we have our Social Studies teacher map out her plan on the chosen topic “relationships” and the links to that topic – love, conflict, sharing etc, (try to visualize it on a map). Then the science teacher follows through in her classes showing the relationship between, for example, cells in the body or the function of joints, the role of the muscles etc. In English Language simple story-writing structure is taught - Introduction, Body and Conclusion showing how the parts are RELATED. Get the point?

The idea is to focus on the topic “relationship” while still teaching your content and then to formulate that on a map as you plan for the term. Each area adds their map showing connectivity. Everyone then comes together with their maps; no long-winded talking, but visuals that highlight how they hope to present their relationship, then discussion, fine-tuning and execution. And the students? They are benefiting from a seamless flow of learning, gaining knowledge that makes sense, connecting dots, as scaffolding takes place. What about the enthusiasm generated among teachers? Do we think there will be? Who knows, but it sounds pretty exciting to me.

Just a thought: What if the final product is displayed at the end of the term in a grand concept map representing all the areas and how they are connected. What do you think the impact would be on our students?

Check out this article: "Using Concept Maps to Gauge Students' Understanding". You can access it from: http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Lee_ConceptMaps/. I found it to be practical and useful. Thoughts anyone?

Collaborative teaching

The idea of collaborative teaching is not new and "theme teaching" is an example of this. Here, I am looking at theme teaching across content areas. I came across a website (http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Wiki_ina-K-12_classroom) which presented the idea of "Collaboration between teachers" using wikis. It was a short piece but it got me thinking about wikis and how it can be used among teachers.

Theme teaching across content areas lends itself to team teaching on a wider scale but it is sometimes hindered by one stumbling block - TIME. Teachers of different content areas can't seem to meet together as a unit to work on a plan. Then came Wikis! Wikis can be used among teachers to collaborate on a unit. Using Social Studies, for example, teachers can choose a topic for a particular school's term, such as, "Relationships". Content area teachers can make suggestions as to how they can express this topic, as lessons, using the specialities of their content areas. They could "work together to create lessons, track how lessons are being administered in their various classrooms and give suggestions" towards a more successful implementation of these lessons.

As Reading Specialists, our concern is largely for those students with learning difficulties and it has been my experience that such students learn better when they can identify a pattern or "connect the dots". Theme teaching is a good way to keep students' attention and interest as teachers bring to light different aspects of a theme in their particular area. I am thinking, too, as a scaffolding technique, it can help students learn how to link old information or familiar situations with new knowledge thus expanding their prior knowledge and giving them a sense of competence and accomplishment.


Next: The practical side of "Theme teaching in Content Areas" using concept maps!

Who am I?

I am a wife, mother and teacher and I enjoy being all three. A bit more about my career. I came into teaching after working in the media for 11 years. This is a caeer path I have always wanted to follow, so when the opportunity presented itself I did not hesitiate to follow through.

I have been teaching for just 6 years now and for the most part it has been interesting and enjoyable. This is my first appointment and I'm glad to have been placed in this particular school because it challenges me as a teacher.

My school's population is made up of largely adolescent struggling readers and writers - a situation that can be both frustrating or intriguing depending on your approach. For the most part I am always amazed at what I encounter on a daily basis. I do not think I can ever get used to the phenomenon - yes, in my view it is a phenomenon: 200+ students and all with such diverse reading and literacy challenges - amazing.

That is what urged me to become a reading specialist. I felt, in Creole terms: "Nah man!" Something has to be done and much, much, more than what is already being done. I needed to first understand the phenomenon and then learn about how I could not just help but be an active ingredient in the process.