Ruth’s Ruckus2

I went to this session on using literacy and reference skills to develop vocabulary.  Some of the ideas were good, but there really was nothing that I could use.  When one of the speakers began to make disparaging remarks about technology, I knew why.  I have the notes and the speakers’ PowerPoint on my flash drive if either of my librarians are interested…there are some ideas for ready made lessons using certain books as well as ideas for lessons with whatever one might have on hand…

One of the interesting things about working of for the Office of Instructional Technology and Media Services (OITMS) is that TRTs and the Librarians have the same supervisor. Once a year we have a joint meeting. This year we will be having a worksession in which we are supposed to come up with a Public Service Announcement for our libraries. While searching for some ideas, Deloris Eure-Nutt (TRT for Hodges Manor and Lakeview) found this…

I first became aware of Dr. Don Leu’s work at the VSRA conference about 4 years ago.  Someone dragged me to the General Session and said they thought that I would enjoy the speaker.  I was skeptical, but pleasantly surprised.  So when I saw that he was featured for this conference, I was determined to go to one of his sessions.  During this session, Dr. Leu gave 15 ideas on how to work on online reading comprehension.  This was a great reminder, as some of the ideas were too forward thinking for many of us the last time that he came.  I certainly wasn’t ready to go back and help teachers integrate some of them the last time…too many of the teachers weren’t ready.  Many still are not ready, but some of the ideas are part of our everyday practice at this point. You can find his handout herein electronic format so that you can use the links… LeuKeynoteHandout

Some ideas that I would like to try: 

• Using Internet workshop as an instructional model – I think 6th grade social studies would be perfect for this – Ms. Hamill,  Mrs. Mitchell, and Ms. Underwood – I would be happy to help you try this out.  I think given a structured problem and a simple worksheet would make the idea appealing to the kids and it wouldn’t take too long.
• Using search engine results to teach students to read to locate information – this would be great in both all of the intermediate grades.  Mrs. Hunter-Lowe, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Wesley – I would specifically like to work on this lesson with you.
• Internet Project – Send/Receive and international morning message of the day – I think fr 2nd and 3rd grade, this would be great if we set it up in the begining of the year and worked with schools that represented the countries that you study.  Mrs. Heil, Mrs. Bass, Ms. K. Brown; Mrs. Rowson, Ms. Bailey, Ms. Sheppard, Mr. T…we should all work get together and plan on doing this for next year.  I’m going to tag Luann Smith while I’m at it – this would be perfect for foreign language as well.

The second session I went to was on vocabulary strategies.  This trio of specialists from Waynesboro had a full room 30 minutes before the session was to start!  Proof that vocabulary is an issue everywhere…people were quite litterally sitting on the floor inorder to particiapte in the session.  I had skipped the general session, choosing instead to traipse through the exhibit hall to see if the vendors had anything interesting.  I was able to arrive early for the session and was lucky enough to get a seat. 

The ladies had a plethora of games that they wanted to share.  These would be useful for step #6 in Marzano’s process for building academic vocabulary.  Some of the games  would actually make good flipcharts. I’m thinking that I might have to try to make them and then get a teacher to use them for a center time activity.  Carving out the time to do it would be the most difficult part…

The first conference session that I went to was The Teacher Research Grant Award session.  If you know me, you know I love research – so this should be no surprise…the session was by a reading specialist in Montgomery County.  She had won the grant with her proposal on using podcasting to increase student reading fluency.  Her work was very interesting. She chose some 5th grade students who had issues with fluency and assigned them poems to read and practice.  She sow them twice a week after that once to listen to monitor their practice and once to record their podcasts. Podcasts were made available to others in the school using  iTunes.  At the end of 9 weeks she took some reading assessments to compare to the students’ reading prior to this intervention strategy.  She found that students had gained 20 wpm in fluency.  In addition the students had begun self correction which meant that the increased fluency had begun to effect their comprehension.  We had a very interesting discussion (there were only 7 of us in the session) about how this intervention might effect students if it were carried out for an entire year. 

The session led me to think about how we might adapt the process to work in my schools – or for that matter replicate it across several schools.  If one of the reading specialists would work with me, I think we could devise an intervention for both upper grade students as well as lower grade students.  If we chose maybe 5 students in the intermediate grades who needed fluency intervention, the reading specialist could assign them a poem (the following authors were recommended in the session: Paul Fleischman; Hoberman; Jack Prelutsky; and Bruce Lansky) and  work with them once a week to check that they were practicing.  Then I could work with the reading specialist and the students once a week to record the podcasts.  We can upload the podcaststo a blog (iTunes wouldn’t work for us) and then teachers in the lower grades could use the podcasts for a center ime activity along with the text that the students used for the podcast. We already have the microphone and software and probably some of the books…we just need some willing participants.  I guess I first thought of  Blount and Carey, but now that I am writing about this, I could see this working for some special ed teachers – namely Armstrong, Goolsby and Morris and even some speech applications , so I guess I’ll tag Moses as well…

The Virgina State Reading Association conference began today.  I’ve been burning the midnight oil getting ready given everything else that seemed to get dropped on my plate in the last month…As the VSRA Technology & Reading chairperson, I have been charged with getting additional technology based sessions added to the conference lineup.  My co-chair, Melissa Warren, along with Deloris Eure-Nutt and I have provided hands-on sessions for the last 3 years.  Set-up and break down have always been a little problematic because of scheduling. This year the conference committee allowed us to present all three of our sessions on the same day and in the same room, so that we did not have to break down the lab and then set it up again in another area. 

We presented three sessions today: web 2.0 playground, Build your own PLN, and Technology Integration Made Easy with MSWORD.  Session info and handouts can be found at http://vsra.pbworks.com/ We divided the labor equally with each of us leading one of the sessions.  Melissa was first, which of course meant that we had to work out the tech difficulties durign her session.  Despite the fact that the conference center couldn’t get the wireless up and running until her session was half over, Melissa did a great job.  She  introduced blogging with Edublogs, podcasting via Vocaroo, and was even able to touch on Voki.  I did a the PLN session, and Deloris led the MSWord session. 

It’s been a long day, and we are exhausted.  But our sessions were full (20+ people each) so we’re hoping that the work we’ve done will help change what’s going on in a few classrooms across the state.

I’m testing

We went to the Promethean ActivVA conference today.  WOW what an experience.  There were lots of ideas and flipcharts to share with everyone.  I had four teachers (Davis, Bass, Hamill, and Pitts) from Victory as well athe principal, Mrs. Horne, attend.  From Brighton I had 6 teachers (Taxson, Perty, Sheppard, Gibson, V. Williams and F. Williams) attend.  KUDOS to Kristy Taxson who presented a session on using the Whiteboard in the primary classroom.  Her session was well received.  Other highlights of the day included learning the “Calibration” song and learning about the e video contest.

Here is a video that was entered into the contest by one of the teachers in attendance at the ActivVirginia conference

One of the things on the list is to create a VoiceThread to be used as an educational resource.  I worked with the Spanish teacher, Mrs. LaPiana and a small group of students to create this Vociethread.  She wanted to use the voicethread to introduce the topic “Seasons” to her class.  I think the kids did great considering that they had no idea what they were saying.  She wrote the scripts out for them phonetically…

On February 10th the secondary TRTs and I held a work session for the Foreign Language teachers.  I was very happy about the work we were able to do assisting most teachers individually or on small groups.  I was able to work with April McKee from Churchland High School who was a really hard sell.  Mrs. McKee has fully participated in every session that we have done with  the foreign language folks, but she finds no use for technology in her classroom…I finally got her insterested in creating a review site for her students.  We put together a wiki very quickly, and then used a digital voice recorder to create two podcasts for her Spanish 1 students.

What does this have to do with my 21Things??  Using a digital voice recorder with a teacher is number 21 on the list.  Don’t get happy yet, I’m not done…I’ve skipped around a bit and still have 5 items to go…