CAPE Teacher Connection - Hodge Podge

This is from Teacher Connection on 9/19/2012

There are 3 books that Edgewood received as resources. They are...

1.  Phonics & Fluency Practice with Poetry by Timothy V. Rasinski, William H. Rupley, William Dee Nichols.
• Use this book to help ENL's and struggling readers.
• Good resource for Success Time Remediation!
2.  INCLUSION 450 Strategies for Success by Peggy A. Hammeken
• Ideas for the classroom and small groups
• Suggestions for assessing
• Ideas for RtI interventions
3. 99 Ideas and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners with the SIOP Model by MaryEllen Vogt and Jana Echevarria 
• Don't let the title fool you, this was by far the best book of the 3
• Resource of ideas for Success Time activities
• I recognized some of these ideas from ER&D classes
• Research based!

These books will be kept in the conference room, and are available for check out.

Apps:

• For those of you who use I-Pads, there are many apps that can be of use in the classroom. One of these is "Too Noisy," an app that meters the noise level in the class. As the meter approaches red, the students can self-monitor and  know they must quiet down. Great for center and group times.
• dv Prompter: a teleprompter for the classroom. Great for meeting notes or building fluency.
• Sand Timer: A digital countdown timer for the classroom.
• Rover: Lets you watch items that would normally require flashplayer on the I-Pad

Pinterest

• Great resource for teachers
• Has an "Educational" tab you can use to find tons of items, which constantly change.
• Can also search things like, "Daily 5"

From 1st Session

• Talked about the need to "teach" children to lengthen their attention span.
• Related to "Daily 5" and idea of "building stamina"
• Several teachers at session using Daily 5, all were very positive about it!
• Strategies to Creative and Critical Thinking (website)
• Emotion Management: Calm Down Kit: Have a pencil box with items the child can use to calm down (10 straws for counting, squeeze ball, crayons, play dough, bubbles, etc.) Child uses items in box as a cool down time.
• Low-Tech Tools: Items that increase teachability without a lot of technological know-how.
• Colored overlays. Use to track words, take glare off paper (reducing eye-strain)
• Tracking Devices: smaller strips of colored overlays, usually in a frame
• Highlighter Tape
• Sticky Notes
• Post-It tape flags
• Highlighters (various colors, can be coded for meanings)

ENL Session

• When asking "How long should I wait after asking an ENL a question and moving to another student," Answer: Till it feels uncomfortable, then add 15 seconds.
• Remember, ENL's must do a lot of language processing before they can understand and respond.
• Takes an ENL 2 years to develop a "playground" vocabulary, 5-10 years to develop an "Academic" vocabulary
• Fluency in speech does not necessarily equal fluency in understanding concepts

Afternoon Sessions

• Purple words: When reading student samples, highlight great words in purple. (Example: instead of calling it a big dog, call it a mammoth hound.) When students get their papers back, they will look for how many purple highlights they have!

Websites of note:

• toolforeducators.com
• simplyscripts.com - Find television and movie scripts to use for reading and fluency. (Be careful to use good judgement!)
• storylineonline.net - Famous actors reading storybooks to children. Great for read-aloud. Sign up for the classroom projector before someone else does! Includes downloadable activity guides. (Free site, donations requested)
• Smenkens page with links to websites for scripts.

Here is just one of the stories...

BONUS:
Be the first person to respond by e-mail: What was the rank, first, and last name of the character Ernest Borgnine played in the comedy series, "McHale's Navy?"