Low Tech Writing Tools

Whiteboards with Expo Markers

Stamps with numbers on them








Colored Pencils

I made a collection of these three things as low tech writing tools with math in mind. For students who have trouble showing their work in small spaces, a whiteboard with dry erase markers is perfect. Students who struggle with writing can also use number stamps to stamp their numerical answers into a provided space rather than than having to write it in with a pencil. Colored pencils can be used to help students distinguish what operations are being used. For example, if a problem is written in red, then subtraction must be used or if green is being used, then the student knows to use addition.

Animoto Book Talk

Here is a link to a book talk video I made about the book, Me and Uncle Romie. Animoto Book Talk Video

Book Talk using Cartoons

I created a cartoon book talk using the program, Comic Life. I talked about the book, Me and Uncle Romie, by Claire Hatfield.

Text-to-speech

Prior to this assignment, I had never used this feature before. I used this feature on a document I created that had a student's IEP goals in them. I have done a numerous amount of IEPs because all of my students' meetings are now expiring at the end of the year, so they were all starting to run together in my mind. With the text-to-speech feature, hearing what I typed actually allowed me to catch some grammatical mistakes that were in my document. For example, I typed his instead of her for a female student. I also forgot to enter a piece of criteria for a goal, and noticed it when I did not hear it played back.

Students who have learning disabilities can also benefit from this feature. In an article from ldonline.org by Dianne DeMott Painter, she explpained how she had a student who had difficulty with decoding. She had the student use a program called Talking Text, which used a speech synthesizer to talk as the student typed each word. If the word was not the one that the student wanted, he had to sound out the word until he heard the correct one or he had to use other references such as a dictionary or an outside spellcheck device.

Using text-to-speech features in word process tools can greatly benefit students of many different populations.

Reference
http://www.ldonline.org/article/5762/

Concordance

Below is a concordance of words for a chapter about characteristics of life. I made this concordance  using lextutor. (I could not find one on Amazon.)

ANIMALS   BACTERIA   BALANCE   BLOOD  BODY   BRACKET   BUDS   CELLS   CHARACTERISTICS  CHEMICAL   DNA  ENERGY ENVIRONMENT EVOLVED FUNGI  GENERATION GENETIC GROW HOMEOSTASIS INFORMATION INTERNAL LIFE LIVING MAIN MAINTAIN MAKE NORMAL NOT  NUCLEI NUCLEUS  OCEAN  OFFSPRING  ORDER  ORGANISMS PLANTS PROCESS PROCESSES PROTEINS REPRODUCE SPECIES WARM   

Concept Map as Part of the Writing Process (Revised)

Here is a concept map I made about the writing process (a revised one). It displays the steps of the writing process. I made this map using Smart Art in Microsoft Word.

Noun Project

Below is my collection of symbols for use of literacy symbols in math. The concept behind my selection is that these are all symbols that I teach my fourth graders. Because most of my students are reading below grade level, word problems and even directions are hard for my students to understand. With these symbols, I could display them and then put words with them so that the students understand what information is being given to them in word problems or what is being asked of them in directions.