Peevy_Journal 1

Refine                                                                                                               

Although I do make it a common practice to use books in the classroom, I intend to start using Author of the month books, with the author being a student!  I will probably start this at the beginning of the year, and I might select 2-3 students so that everyone is selected.  I also plan to start using dialogue journals, where students write 2-3 sentences on a topic of their choosing to me, and I respond daily.  Today, I started using the voice recording on the computer- I decided to use it as a fluency tool and a Listening as well as a Reading and Speaking tool.  I also plan to make a simple rubric and have the students check each other’s reading.  I started it today by allowing each child to read for 15 seconds, and then playing each child’s reading back- over the loudspeaker- and having three children say something positive about each reader.  That went really well today.  I also plan to start making more programs on mimio notebook for my lower ELL students.  Before reading this chapter, I was not aware of how much good that does for these students, it truly does boost all literacy skills.  I do want to start using www.prezi.com with my class, I was exposed to that this summer and liked it as an educational tool.  I have been using the presentation tool presented via www.glogster.org this year with my class.  On that site, the students make digital posters.  Students can embed links to other sites, and add information that way.  We usually make these weekly or at least every other week.  I would like to explore the online portfolios more, and learn to start using them and use them next year.  I am checking out www.epals.com currently.  The book mentions that these are good for middle school students; however I believe that my students (2^nd grade) would do well with them.  That sounds like a great program that I could start using right now.  The book mentions the fact that when a student is a beginner with a computer program, they need simple instructions on how to do it or a powerpoint.  I try to do both with my students, and they have not had any problems with technology this year.  Currently they are making powerpoints.  As I mentioned earlier in this paper, I cannot wait to sit down and check out every web site that is mentioned in this chapter!  The section about website reliability is also one I wish to explore further, because many sites have inappropriate subject matter on them.  The site www.teachertube.com is not mentioned here, and I have found it to be a great “clean” version of youtube that is classroom- friendly.