Saturday, January 29, 2011

Continuing to learn and improve....

Hello there... Since the last blog, I have implemented a few new features to my classroom regarding technology. The first addition being a "blogging checklist" for my fifth graders. Instead of a free for all blog that is grammatically incorrect, I wanted my students to get a little more independent at blogging and publishing. Now, blogging can be an independent activity without me checking in too much. They each get a checklist with 4 things: 1. check for capitals and punctuation 2. check spelling 3. Have a partner read it 4. Are you proud of your work? My kids have gotten pretty good at following these steps and blogging more independently without me standing over them.

Another new thing I tried was "raz-kids.com". It's a part of learninga-z.com. Since I am a learning specialist and between our team, we share a budget, the other learning specialist and I decided to share a membership. On this website, we can assign students e-books of various levels. The website reads the books to the kids, lets the kids read them alone, gives comprehension quizzes, and even allows the kids to record a running record with a microphone for us to listen to later. So far, we have seen that it has been a great independent activity for our students. We frequently lack independent work at our students' ability levels. Our students love it... and my student with autism is making so much progress due to the engaging and visual nature of the e-books!

Kelly

2 comments:

Kelly Berry said...

I really like your addition of a "blogging checklist". It's great to let students know what is expected of them when writing, whether it's a report or a blog post!

Ms. Booth said...

I have raz-kids too and I love it! My kids do too, of course. The best part for them are the quizzes.