Pat


 * [[file:fluency word list.pdf]][[file:fluency word list.pdf]][[file:fluency techniques.doc]]http://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-school-technology

Monday 7/13/09** As always, Jane takes me places I haven't yet been and challenges me to think about technology in new ways. This collaboration with Kate is no exception. After a day of their tag team act, I'm thinking in a much broader way about what might be possible with speech technology. As I read (listen to) the article "Technology - The Great Equalizer**", **many thoughts enter my summer focused brain. Stop, take notes... thanks Kate... but wait, sit back and just listen... thanks Jane. Gradually, I move from jotting down sites where reading technology could be researched to chewing on the undigested pieces of the day's offerings. I let go of the need to get all that information down. My mind wanders from quotes like "new access to learning opportunities" for Special Education students to ideas about differentiation for the array of students in any classroom. I think about Gardner's theories on multiple intelligence and the importance of considering multiple modalities as we teach. The big idea for me from this text is how instructional and assistive technologies no longer claim discrete areas. The world opens wider on both sides of the divide. Or does it close the divide? For us and our students, this seems to change the playing field. But what of the time needed to choose the right application for the need? What of the cost involved as technology budgets shrink along with all the others? What of the constant change at rapid speeds that makes what we're doing today obsolete tomorrow? As the landscape around us continues to morph, it's likely that technology's role will only increase. As I finish, I guess I'm left with more questions than new knowledge. It's not a bad place to be at the end of day one.**
 * First Day

Tuesday 7/14/09 Second Day

Just before lunch I went to the article "Strategies for Increasing Fluency in the Classroom", thinking I was getting a jump on homework. When I sat down to the homework earlier this evening, I thought I'd go back and finish the "first day" fluency article, as the topic is of great interest to me in my position of academic support teacher (having worked with grades 1-5 over the last three years). The MAP tag was a new one for me. However, I was familiar with the process, having used it this past year, my first one using Read Naturally with small groups. It was interesting to read about work geared to high school students, yet it wasn't much of a stretch from some of the work I'm currently doing.

Being warmed up with the introductory article helped me immediately dig into the Mather/Goldstein article. This was written around the time I was first introduced to new trends in fluency by Judith Nero, one of our academic support teacher when I started teaching 4th grade in Guilford. At that time we were trying some of the Great Leaps activities with the help of a para and middle school mentor supporting the plan. I didn't feel especially successful at the time and found individual fluency work both hard to organize and manage.

The Reading Fluency article, though a bit out of date, was helpful in giving me a broader overview than the one I had as I started reading. Many of the practices mentioned are familiar from recent readings and practices. Having them laid out like this gave me a quick reference list. I especially liked the analogy to bicycle gears and the notion of adjusting rate of reading for the intended purpose. What a great way this could be of getting across the relationships between reading rate and "power" to older readers.

OK, The game's about to start. I've already jumped up about five times. Returning to work during commercials has become increasingly difficult. There's no way to "listen", as I couldn't get on the internet with the school computer. Time to quit for now. Even so, tonight's assignment leaves me hungry for tomorrow's class and the remaining readings about fluency!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Third Day

I am officially frustrated!!! After settling in for a homework session in a pretty positive frame of mind I find that I still can't connect to the internet on the school computer. I've checked my notes, rechecked, gone through the "assist me" menu, and moved on to my home computer, where the same internet connection cord works just fine.

If I wasn't getting started so late, I'd search for a free text-to-speech program to download for listening. There's not enough energy left to start a new endeavor at this point in the evening. So, I'll get to the assignment and forgo the practice with GhostReader.

Now, to regain my positive attitude and say that today was a bonus day for me. When I signed up for the class, I had no idea we'd be spending time exploring fluency issues. Kate's presentation and selection of reading materials were extremely helpful to me. There was depth and scope beyond the expectations I had after finding out that fluency would be touched upon. The discussions throughout the fluency sessions provided differing points of view and many helpful ideas. Even with all that we covered, there's still so much to learn. Today gave me some direction for professional goals and development.

The SmartBoard opened up many possibilities for our teaching practices. It was fun to play and find out some of the obvious uses. Interestingly, I experienced much more eye strain today. The SmartBoard was harder for me to read than the projector screen. There was a spot of reflective glare on the bottom right hand corner of the board that was really bothersome to my eyes. Does the suspended projector have less glare?

Thanks for not giving additional reading tonight. The amount of screen reading (even with softer background) today probably contributed to the eye strain as well. I'll push myself a bit furthur to read other postings before gong to bed, wishing that there could be "listening" to go with it. Perhaps I'll take a quick stretch first and put in some eye drops.

Reading Any's post for today reminded me of the GhostReader experience with skimming and scanning. I was very anxious to "read" both articles and didn't want to just hunt for terminology. I started by previewing (skimming) without the Ghost. Before doing that I actually copied and pasted the vocabulary list in text edit. Then I did a few returns between each one. So, I felt pretty confident when I started reading that my purpose was clear. I set the wpm at 75 and put brown in the background, along with increasing the font size to 14 - oh, these aging eyes. I set in Heather's voice, the one I felt most comfortable hearing. Also, I checked the modification box to prevent text from being deleted. The time spent setting up enabled me to be more efficient in completing the task. Once I got going, I stopped as I found vocabluary words, copied and pasted them on the note pad. I used Mary's strategy of the space bar to toggle. Because I was familiar with much of what was being written about, the fast clip of reading allowed me to move through the whole first article. Before I got too far, I started using Kate's suggestion of fast forwarding through paragraphs. I found myself surprised by hearing, "underscore, underscore, underscore, ..." and burst out laughing. This was most distracting to my neighbors. I find myself needing to develop an etiquite for honoring people's need to be in the passage. Some things get blocked out but more than once I also found myself forgetting that a person was listening and tried to begin a conversation. My husband did the same thing to me last night (three times), forgetting as he sat across the table from me at our computer, that I was "listening" to my homework. //__**THANKS FOR THIS IDEA PAT!!! (I LOVE THE WAY YOU WRITE :-) ANDY)**__//

