Sunday, November 11, 2012

Summary of C4T#3

"Making "the Cafe" Make Sense for Primary Students".
Making “the Café” Make Sense for Primary Students was a post about how Kathy Cassidy came upon two books titled,” The Daily Five and the The Café Book”, by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. Cassidy pointed out that these books assisted her in organizing a primary classroom to have an individualized reading program. However, she encountered a few problems with the terminology that the book insisted needed to be on the bulletin board. The students were supposed to write out the reading strategies as each one is taught. The acronym C-A-F-E stands for the main categories that were comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expand vocabulary. The students were having a hard time understanding each; therefore, Ms. Cassidy changed the terminology to words that suited her students understanding abilities. She changed the acronym to R-E-A-D, which stood for right words, explain what you read, able to read smoothly, and discover new words. I told her how that I thought the change was really needed to insure that her students understood the concepts in order to have a successful reading program.

 "Is There an App for That? Word Work Edition".
The next post that I viewed from Ms. Cassidy’s blog was titled, “Is There an App for that? Word Work Edition. This was a very interesting post about applications that can help students to spell words that are frequently used. The applications that Ms. Cassidy informed me on throughout this post were DrawFree, Magic Ink, Skywrite, and Word Wizard. Ms. Cassidy explained that DrawFree is a drawing application not a spelling application that is free; however, with this application she informed me that the application is more engaging because students get to choose to write with a paint brush, pencil, or a crayon, She states that Magic Ink was a good application because the quicker students move their fingers the thicker the lines appear on the application. The cost of Magic Ink is $0.99.Also, Ms. Cassidy states that Skywrite is a free application that students will be keep students engaged. She states that with this application students write words in the sky and a tiny airplane follows their finger then turns the letters into cloud letters. However, students can also type text into a textbox and the airplane will create cloud letters for them. Last she informed me on the application Word Wizard that cost $2.99. Ms. Cassidy says that this application reads the letters as they are dragged onto the board and as more letters are added it speaks back the combined sound until there is a complete word. Word Wizard was my favorite because I think it beneficial for students because the application speaks the words correctly back to the student as they spell the word out. Word Wizard can also help students that are having trouble saying words

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