EDUC373: ASSIGNMENT 2 Theresa Hartigan & Micah Habil

Who are we teaching?

Our Students Our Issues  Stage 1 (class of 17)  10 ESL Students  3 Indigenous students  Behavioural Issues  High rates of ADD and ADHD  Engagement Issues with students, parents and the community  Emergent/Early Readers  Strong focus on decoding and comprehension skills development while also improving fluency and accuracy.  Focus on sounds and strategies to aid decoding

Our Students Our Issues  According to McIntosh: ESL students experience:  Isolation due to language barriers  Anxiety  Depression  Unable to relate to common knowledge that other students hold  Struggle to connect to cultural specific content  Intimidation and insecurities  Frustration  Confusion  Delays of up to 7 years behind their peers

What Can We Do?

Reading Eggs  Simple and low cost phoneme development program  Develops several types of literacy for students: Digital Reading Writing  Strong and structured focus on sounds and letter formation  Doesn’t require cultural prior knowledge  Strong visual communication to minimise the language barrier  Accessible at home  Engaging to keep attention

Blogs   Safe  Secure  Communication with international communities Extends the classroom beyond the local community  Teaching and learning resources for staff  Connections from home to classroom  New paradigm of teaching  Allows for students to take responsibility for learning and engage in their own languages with others  Allows for creation and sharing of content for project based learning  Low cost for users

Podcasting in the Classroom  An audio file that individuals can download and listens to  Radio WillowWeb Radio WillowWeb  Low cost for users  Tools required: Microphone, internet access, free audio mixing software (e.g. Garage Band)  Empowers students and teachers to become content producers rather than content consumers  Challenges students to communicate compellingly  Develops oral-presentation skills and storytelling technique

Web tools / Web Apps  Web apps are usually free and are accessible from any computer with an internet connection  Facilitate online sharing and collaboration  Storybird – create and tell stories digitally by combining imaginative artwork and text Storybird  Glogster – create virtual posters combining text, audio, video and graphics, and share them with others electronically. Glogster

Physical Resources   Making resources accessible for students that engages parents and the community with school resources encouraging participation in the school literacy program.

References LalorParkPublicSchool/41706/2012 Smart, M. P. (2013). Listening to themselves: Podcasting takes lessons beyond the classroom. Edutopia: What Works in Education. Retrieved October 13, 2013, from broadcasts broadcasts