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Classroom Contributions CS1

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keyword: Speaking
submit: Submit Query
course: CS
level: 1
center: ISU
semester: Spring
term: 2
year: 2008
instructor: Michelle Parks
e-mail: [email protected]
report text: VoiceThread Website http://voicethread.com/#q
This is a great website for lower level CS students where they (or the instructor) can upload pictures and then students can record comments about the photo. It can be used as a virtual show-and-tell as well. To start off, I uploaded a family photo and introduced each person in the photo by recording a short commentary. Then I asked other students to do the same with their own photos that they uploaded. They could also comment on my photo or each other’s photos. To keep the identities straight, you can create different identities within one account. The students all chose a photo for their identity so it was easy to tell who recorded each comment. Students can re-record their comments as many times as they like. They can also comment via a web camera so it is like a movie. While recording their comments, they can also draw on the picture to show what exactly they are talking about at that moment. The marks stay for several seconds and then disappear.

My students really seemed to enjoy this. It should be noted that the students do need to have access to a computer with speakers and a microphone. Additionally, you can upgrade your account to an “educator account” for free which I believe gives you unlimited threads.

I always do this with a colleague (one of us conducts the interview while the other assesses). The interviewer first puts the student at ease with some small talk, and then guides the student through several tasks (generally 3-4). These are always based on material that has been covered in class. For instance, the student may be asked to explain what people are doing in a picture, describe the location of objects in a room, participate in a role play about going to the supermarket, and/or talk about a favorite vacation or their first day in the USA. Normally, I select the tasks in order to elicit specific vocabulary, structures (e.g. question forms, past tense), socially-appropriate forms, etc.

Another benefit of this assessment tool is that it gives the course instructor additional feedback on each student from a colleague. These interviews generally last about 10 minutes with another 2-3 minutes afterwards for discussion between the interviewer and assessor.

So, during one class recently, we talked about what a voice mail greeting should entail. They also called my phone to listen to my greeting to give them an idea on what one might hear, its intonation, etc. After everyone had decided individually on what would be the best message for them, I divided the class into groups based on the kind of phone they had.

I divided the class in this manner so that they could help one another with figuring out how to record on their phone. Some students were successful in recording an intelligible message. There were others who, after many attempts, were unable to figure out how to record a message on their phone. I would do this activity again, but next time, I would find out more about the individual steps that need to be taken to record a message, especially on those phones that are different from what I own.

I would like to note, however, that the students who were able to record a message were very proud of themselves!

report text: Due to the nature of this contribution, specific activites discussed here could be revised to be useful at any lower level and in either cs or rw class. Please note that much of what appears here comes form material that I found at ldonline.com. some of the suggestions or strategies included here might very well not fit in with the approach of the ILC curriculum. Nonetheless, there might be some worthwhile nuggets of information or useful ideas that could work in ILC circumstances. At the behest of a friend whose American daughter seems unable to learn a second language but is an otherwise very good student, I did a bit of searching regarding what concrete approach(es) can be directed toward second language learners. From what I can tell, a great deal has been written about LD and language learning. Much of what I found applies to first language learners and/or children. Furthermore, the issues involved are outrageously complex (language learning difficulties in a first language, educational background, neurological issues, cultural issues, etc.). Some of these issues can be further explored by going to http:// www.ldonline.org. If we at ILC determine that we can serve the broad spectrum of students who come our way, it might be useful to consider specific approaches to dealing with struggling students.Louise Spear Swerling wrote an interesting article in LD online and she made reference to some specific approaches to remediation for language learners with LDs: http://www.ldonline.org/spearswerling/8001 Several studies have suggested that English language learners with LDs can benefit from interventions known to benefit monolingual youngsters with learning disabilities. These interventions include explicit phonemic awareness instruction, structured and systematic phonics instruction, explicit instruction in comprehension strategies, and peer-assisted learning. The extent to which this instruction should happen in the native language initially, if feasible, is still a matter of debate.ELLs with LDs also have some specific instructional requirements related to their status as English language learners, such as needing an emphasis on English vocabulary development and the use of sheltered English techniques to aid English comprehension. Examples of sheltered English techniques are the use of visual aids, such as props, pictures, gestures, and facial expressions, to help convey meaning; encouraging children to expand and elaborate their responses to help develop oral expression abilities; and structuring oral input based on the level of understanding that children have.Although much remains to be learned about ELLs with LDs, currently there is a great deal of interest in this population in the research community, with a number of ongoing studies. In the future, this research should increase our knowledge about the best ways to identify and teach English language learners with learning disabilities. So, what I have gleaned here are several specific approaches: 1) explicit phonemic awareness instruction, 2) structured and systematic phonics instruction, 3) explicit instruction in comprehension strategies, and 4) peer-assisted learning. One can easily imagine that each of these is worth a look. Since I was particularly curious about what # 1 is about, I looked into it a bit. http://www.ldonline.org/article/6254 What is phonological awareness?Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language can be divided into smaller components and manipulated. Spoken language can be broken down in many different ways, including sentences into words and words into syllables (e. g., in the word simple, /sim/ and /ple/), onset and rime (e. g., in the word broom, /br/ and /oom/), and individual phonemes (e.g., in the word hamper, /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er/). Manipulating sounds includes deleting, adding, or substituting syllables or sounds (e.g., say can; say it without the /k/; say can with /m/ instead of /k/). Being phonologically aware means having a general understanding at all of these levels. Teaching phonological awarenessThere is ample evidence that phonological awareness training is beneficial for beginning readers starting as early as age 4 (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991). In a review of phonological research, Smith et al. (1998) concluded that phonological awareness can be developed before reading and that it facilitates the subsequent acquisition of reading skills. Documented effective approaches to teaching phonological awareness generally include activities that are age appropriate and highly engaging. Instruction for 4-year-olds involves rhyming activities, whereas kindergarten and first-grade instruction includes blending and segmenting of words into onset and rime, ultimately advancing to blending, segmenting, and deleting phonemes. This pattern of instruction follows the continuum of complexity illustrated in Figure 1. Instruction frequently involves puppets who talk slowly to model word segmenting or magic bridges that are crossed when children say the correct word achieved by synthesizing isolated phonemes. Props such as colored cards or pictures can be used to make abstract sounds more concrete. During the last few years, publishers have produced multiple programs in phonological awareness, some of which are based on research. Two of these programs are Ladders to Literacy (O'Connor, Notari-Syverson, & Vadasy, 1998) and Teaching Phonemic Awareness (Adams et al., 1996). Figures 2 through 4 are illustrations of phonemic awareness lessons that are based on examples from these programs.Figure 2. Instructional activity that teaches synthesis of phonemes into words.Guess-the-word gameObjective: Students will be able to blend and identify a word that is stretched out into its component sounds.Materials Needed: Picture cards of objects that students are likely to recognize such as: sun, bell, fan, flag, snake, tree, book, cup, clock, planeActivity: Place a small number of picture cards in front of children. Tell them you are going to say a word using "Snail Talk" a slow way of saying words (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/). They have to look at the pictures and guess the word you are saying. It is important to have the children guess the answer in their head so that everyone gets an opportunity to try it. Alternate between having one child identify the word and having all children say the word aloud in chorus to keep children engaged.Figure 3. An Instructional activity that teaches segmentation at multiple phonological levels.Segmentation activitiesObjectives: Students will be able to segment various parts of oral language.Activity:a. Early in phonological awareness instruction, teach children to segment sentences into individual words. Identify familiar short poems such as "I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream!" Have children clap their hands with each word.b. As children advance in their ability to manipulate oral language, teach them to segment words into syllables or onsets and rimes. For example, have children segment their names into syllables: e.g., Ra-chel, Al-ex-an-der, and Rod-ney.c. When children have learned to remove the first phoneme (sound) of a word, teach them to segment short words into individual phonemes: e.g., s-u-n, p-a-t, s-t-o-p.Figure 4. An instructional activity that teaches phoneme deletion and substitution.Change-a-name gameObjective: Students will be able to recognize words when the teacher says the word with the first sound removed.Activity: Have students sit in a circle on the floor. Secretly select one child and change their name by removing the first sound of the name. For example, change Jennifer to Ennifer or change William to Illiam. As you change the name, the children have to identify who you are talking about.Extension Ideas: As children become better at identifying the child's name without the first sound, encourage them to try removing the beginning sounds of words and pronounce the words on their own.After children learn how to remove sounds, teach them to substitute the beginning sound in their name with a new sound. The teacher can model this, beginning with easier sounds (common sounds of consonant s, e.g., /m/, /t/, /p/) and advancing to more complex sounds and sound blends (e.g., /ch/, /st/).Most early phonological awareness activities are taught in the absence of print, but there is increasing evidence that early writing activities, including spelling words as they sound (i.e., invented or temporary spelling), appear to promote more refined phonemic awareness (Ehri, 1998; Treiman, 1993). It may be that during spelling and writing activities children begin to combine their phonological sensitivity and print knowledge and apply them to building words. Even if children are unable to hold and use a pen or pencil, they can use letter tiles or word processing programs to practice their spelling.Instruction in phonological awareness can be fun, engaging, and age appropriate, but the picture is not as simple as it seems. First, evidence suggests that instruction in the less complex phonological skills such as rhyming or onset and rime may facilitate instruction in more complex skills (Snider, 1995) without directly benefiting reading acquisition (Gough, 1998). Rather, integrated instruction in segmenting and blending seems to provide the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (e.g., Snider, 1995). Second, although most children appear to benefit from instruction in phonological awareness, in some studies there are students who respond poorly to this instruction or fail to respond at all. For example, in one training study that provided 8 weeks of instruction in phonemic awareness, the majority of children demonstrated significant growth, whereas 30% of the at-risk students demonstrated no measurable growth in phonological awareness (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). Similarly, in a 12-week training in blending and segmenting for small groups (3-4 children) in 2-minute sessions four times a week, about 30% of the children still obtained very low scores on the segmenting posttest and 10 % showed only small improvements on the blending measures (Torgesen et al., 1994).Torgesen et al. (1994) concluded that training for at-risk children must be more explicit or more intense than what is typically described in the research literature if it is to have a substantial impact on the phonological awareness of many children with severe reading disabilities. Therefore, we recommend two tiers of instruction. The first tier of instruction is the highly engaging, age-appropriate instruction that we introduced earlier. The second tier of instruction includes more intensive and strategic instruction in segmenting and blending at the phoneme level (e.g., Snider, 1995).Beside content, an
other issue that requires attention in phonological awareness instruction is curriculum design. From research, we are able to deduce principles for effectively designing phonological awareness instruction. These design principles apply for all students but are particularly important for students who respond poorly to instruction. In the design of phonological awareness instruction, the following general principles increase students' success (Chard & Osborn, 1998):• Start with continuous sounds such as /s/, /m/, and /f/ that are easier to pronounce than stop sounds such as /p/, /b/, and /k/;• Carefully model each activity as it is first introduced;• Move from larger units (words, onset-rime) to smaller units (individual phonemes);• Move from easier tasks (e.g., rhyming) to more complex tasks (e.g., blending and segmenting); and,• Consider using additional strategies to help struggling early readers manipulate sounds. These strategies may include using concrete objects (e.g., blocks, bingo chips) to represent sounds.Research suggests that by the end of kindergarten children should be able to demonstrate phonemic blending and segmentation and to make progress in using sounds to spell simple words. Achieving these goals requires that teachers be knowledgeable about effective instructional approaches to teaching phonological awareness and be aware of the ongoing progress for each of their students. In the next section, we describe effective ways to assess phonological skills and monitor progress in phonological awareness.Since we currently have a large number of Saudi students who struggle with spelling in particular and reading and writing more generally, I would like to conclude with an approach to helping these students. None of this seems to be earth shatteringly new, but it is useful to have the approach spelled out in one place. These suggestions come from Ms. Swerling: http://www.ldonline.org/article/5587 Suggestions for teaching spelling to students with LD• Provide systematic phonics instruction that incorporates teaching of phonemic awareness. Although this kind of instruction alone will not be enough to make students flawless spellers, phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge form an essential base for accurate spelling in English. • Teach common irregular words from the earliest stages of spelling. It is virtually impossible to generate a complete sentence without common irregular words such as of, what, and were. Therefore, it is important to begin teaching these kinds of words early, as one part of a more comprehensive spelling program. Multisensory techniques involving repeated tracing and saying of words can be especially helpful for introducing irregular words. • Teach useful spelling rules. Although many English words do not conform to consistent rules, some generalizations are very helpful to students, such as rules for adding endings to words with a silent e (make, making) or to closed syllables that end in a single consonant (sit, sitting). • Teach spelling of important grade-appropriate words. Because many English words cannot be spelled solely through the use of rules or phonics knowledge, spelling instruction also should include studying a corpus of important words needed for accurate spelling at each grade level. • Emphasize activities that involve writing or building printed words with letter tiles, not oral spelling. Oral spelling activities, such as traditional spelling bees, usually are not as effective as activities that require children to look carefully at the printed word. • Encourage students to use knowledge about root words and relationships among words to help them spell new words. Even when they possess this kind of knowledge, students will not always apply it spontaneously. It is very helpful to point out relationships among words and to illustrate how knowing the spelling of one word facilitates spelling of related words, as in
the colony-colonist example. • Encourage independent reading to increase exposure to printed words. Independent reading cannot substitute for direct spelling instruction, but it can help to promote spelling knowledge---and of course, it is valuable for many other reasons as well. • Teach older children how to use a computer spell-checker. Like independent reading, spell-checkers are not a substitute for explicit spelling instruction from a knowledgeable teacher. Also, children need some phonics knowledge in order to use spell-checkers effectively. Nevertheless, spell-checkers can be enormously helpful to struggling spellers and writers, especially in the later grades when the volume of writing increases greatly. Of course, this is very much just the tip of the iceberg. This is just a snapshot of what approaches might be available for ILC students who are struggling. Furthermore, it would be more useful for some students and less for others. To effectively support the ILC student that needs a more focused intervention and to effectively support the teaching staff that could focus on these needs and issues, creative approaches to teacher support become part of the challenge at hand.

report text: Because the theme of CS 1's core project is shopping, I decided to use this theme and take it one step further. I had a small class of only 3 students who were all Asian women and they needed help in working on pronunciation and on their confidence. I thought it would be a good idea to have them do a final presentation which I called, "Shopping and Selling." The students had to choose a product that they use every day in their house, at school, at work, etc. First,we brainstormed some ideas together. They then had to select one and research it on the internet. They looked into the history and background of the product and found prices and pictures of it. Next, they had to interview some people and ask them why they use the product and why this product is important to their lives. The last step was to synthesize all of this information and make a presentation with visual aids or powerpoint. They focused on "selling" the product, as well and told us why this product was so important and why everyone must have one in order to improve their lives.The presentations turned out very well. The day before the final presentation the students were videorecorded and I played it back and used the video to critique their performances. Were they loud enough? Did they speak clearly? Was the presentation logical? Did they make eye contact? Did they tell or read their presentation? I will attach the sheet I gave the students in a separate email.

report text: Adult Learning Activities from California Distance Learning ProjectThis website has a variety of listening topics (some with video) and follow-up activities. There are scripts for all the stories and some have accompanying videos. The results can be e-mailed to the instructor. Some of the activities include vocabulary, spelling, matching, short answers, and writing. There are also lists of additional topical websites that students can explore further. It is a good resource that can used with different levels. http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=homepage