I read the article 3 Strategies to Fire Up Hesitant Writers,
it is an article that appeared in my Feedly because I am subscribed to Edutopia
RSS. I found this article really amazing because I taught fourth grade for
several years and most teachers would complain about that grade because we take
the Writing STAAR. Many students have difficulty finding writing exciting and
they often see it as something tedious to do and they lack motivation for
writing papers. This article shared some great strategies for getting students
started in the writing process. The one that I liked the most was having the
student’s audio record themselves then transcribing it. I would see this
frequently in the classroom, students claiming they did not know what to write
or saying they did not have ideas for their paper, but once I would sit with
them they had countless ideas. Many of the students wanted to just tell me
their entire paper and were so excited to tell me their ideas but were not
excited to write them. I think this would be so beneficial in the classroom
because the students can say their paper and get all of their ideas out there
then they can go back listen to their audio and write it on paper.
Another article I read was TinyTap
Courses - Create Interactive Lessons for iPad & Android. I thought this
would be something great that I can use in my classroom. It would be so helpful
during labs in science because it is easy to create and easy to use on the
IPad. You can create fun educational games for students to play. When you
create games you can take pictures to import for multiple choice answers. I
thought this was interesting because while my students are doing their science
lab activity I often take pictures. I can upload these pictures and I can use them for
an activity on TinyTap. I think it would be interesting to use authentic
student work pictures and I think the students would like to see their own work
as a multiple choice answer. Educators can even share their work or find other
games created by others to use. TinyTap Courses also lets you save and organize
your creations. Many of my students would absolutely love this and I think it
would be an engaging activity for students in the classroom.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/10/tinytap-courses-create-interactive.html#.WAFUWvRBGhE
Hi Claudia, I also think that TinyTap Courses would be great for students. All students love to play games and what a better way to learn than through games. I like your idea of using the students' pictures in the games. Being a former 4th grade teacher also, I couldn't help but think how beneficial it would be to have the dyslexia and struggling students to record themselves and then transcribe. This tool would definitely benefit them.
ReplyDeleteClaudia,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the blog called “Strategies to Fire Up Hesitant Writers.” Sometimes kids do get really excited about what they need to write about, but most of the time they like to share by telling you orally and when it comes down to it, so when it comes down to the writing part, they are very lazy and unresponsive. I love how this blog talks about different ideas on getting kids to write.
Hello Claudia,
ReplyDeleteI really liked the ideas you shared about engaging students to write. I also taught 4th grade, and you're right students will talk about their ideas and then say they have nothing to write about. The idea of recording themselves might even be a strategy that will help them with the editing and revising piece. I am going to share this idea. Thank you for sharing.
Lourdes
Dear Claudia,
ReplyDeleteI am one of those that struggling to write papers. I really like the idea to save an audio explaining what I am understanding of the article and then write the paper. I used to use some small card to organize information of the article for instance: title, authors, year, relevance of the paper, category, summary, and how this article contribute to my research. So, now I can do the same but in a record. Thanks for sharing it.
Maria
I think educational technology will help us all become better graders and more efficient in our writing skills. I do have alot of issues when writing a paper, but i found that using google docs really facilitates that process. I think that your ideas of engaging the students are spot on, one of the many challenges teachers face is time management. I think this is a great way to fix time management.
ReplyDeleteHello Claudia,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about how using the three strategies for writing provides students, especially if students can record their ideas. technology tool for writing is more efficient when teaching students, the writing process. I like that the TINY/Tap Courses allows users to save and organize their creations as students play educational games.