If they like tablets, give them tablets!
To avoid the use of paper and bring the exchange of objects to the minimum, we are now required to take advantage of the digital tools, and transform our existing handouts into a digital format.
There is one clever way of doing it (and perhaps more than one, but I'm just going to share one for now), which can be very effective in the long run for the students who struggle with reading and writing. Try it out here! (The link should be valid until June 30th 2021)
So, did you like it? What was your favorite part?
You can log in with your google account at www.nearpod.com and access a huge library of already existing lessons. You can, of course, create your own lessons from scratch, or add them to your google slides to make your lessons more engaging and interactive. The key to any learning is variety of approaches and activities, and this is what Nearpod successfully reminds you of. Their pedagogy is based on 5Es: Engage, Explore, Explain, Extension, Evaluate. If you wish to know more about it, find the RESOURCE tab in your Nearpod Landing page, or contact me!
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How I gave in to my student's love for slimeThis story is personal and it has a happy ending. The student that I have been tutoring (by using the 'different' approach, and especially working on her short term memory and sound-letter recognition) constantly gets distracted as we meet at her house. All the toys are very near, and she reaches out for them during our lesson. Her concentration is limited, and even when she does something interesting or exciting, she moves on to another 'idea' within minutes. Working on writing is painful for both of us, and the grammar rules are just impossible to grasp. Until.... the magic - actually SLIME - happened! She has a box of slime in many colors, with the tiny multi-shapes as beads. It's a texture explosion! Knowing that students with reading difficulties, and the dys-constellation students, find it hard to accept visual and auditory stimulus, they develop the tactile sense. It is common to use tokens and small objects that can be manipulated to represent sounds within a word. We were trying to do activities that would help her prepare for the big exam.
Sometimes the magic is right in front of the eyes, and sometimes it's in the hands ✨. Slime now comes in boxes, ready made to be mixed with beads, in tons of attractive colors. There are different textures, ranging from sandy to honey-like. If the students already spend a lot of time kneading it, they might as well incorporate it in the learning process. I am looking forward to using slime in future, and already have some ideas how to make use of it in EFL activities. Will keep you posted! Go back to the beginnings...
It is often good to remind yourself and refresh the memory of the basic elements of what you are working with.
How to transfer your analog game to a digital medium
Well, it takes a bit of learning, that's inevitable. Start with the simplest ones and learn in the process of making. Watch some tutorials, play with possibilities. Ask your coder-friends to help you out. After all, it IS a new language, but it's not insurmountable.
One more thing, do not thrive for perfection! It needs to be functional, and after you make a few of those, you might get a chance to sell your stuff to a big gaming company ;-)
Dragon Lude and background art by @griffin_paints (Instagram)
Touch it, grab it, feel it, move it
In the spirit of multi-sensory approach, I have bought and created a few versions of the alphabet, which I intend to use in the classroom. Perhaps even with non-beginners, if I find a suitable activity to blend them in.
A former colleague of mine gave me the Banana Wild Tiles and a set of magnetic cards. The first one is quite small, but I coloured the vowel tiles in various patterns, while the magnetic ones are quite big. However, the animals they feature have nothing to do with the letters, so I'm afraid it could lead to confusion with certain students. Some time ago, I managed to find the letter-shape magnets, both capitals and lowercase. They come in their own stencils, which turned out to be even more useful than the fragile cardboard-like sets
In my own hand-made production, I came up with two simple and cheap ideas. I bought inexpensive no-brand-name building blocks and wrote the letters on the sides.
The second one required more time, but I think the end result is quite attractive. I've had the 'swimming noodle' at home for a long time. I use it as shoulder support in massage and for some exercises. So, I sliced it in 1.5 cm thick discs, which came out a perfect size for the above mentioned stencils. I had cut out the vowels from some fabric paper earlier, but couldn't come up with a surface to stick the letters to. I was thinking about buying tiles or linoleum, but it seemed like a too ambitious project. In the moment of leisure, I had an epiphany: the spongy noodle would be the perfect material for my alphabet. One 1-meter noodle costs about 3 euros. I figure I could make about four sets from one. I used both sides of the disc, and I created four vowels each. They are light, almost indestructible, but still big enough not to get lost easily. And easily replaceable if lost or damaged. In the end, I traced some glitter glue along the letters. It will give them texture and sparkle!
Is it really teaching, or are we being too loose?I have tested three comic book generating online tools: https://www.storyboardthat.com/comic-maker https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ https://app.pixton.com/#/join?classCode=xjaph Storyboard that gives the widest range of features: backgrounds, characters, objects, shapes of speech bubbles, element editor (to change colour, size etc. of each element you drag and drop into your box), but the free mode does not allow download without a very visible watermark, and you have a limit to create only two quite short comic books. It's excellent if you require it every week because it's versatile in styles. Pixton is probably my favourite, because it's limitless withing a particular 'package'. If you are working on 18th century art, you may just buy that package, and you can create as many comic books as possible. It even gets the classroom feature, where the teacher, and the students she can invite, create a virtual classroom. So, it creates a community within the comic book space. Makebeliefs comics is the most artistic and unique one. It's limitless, but the options are not as rich as in the Storyboard. However, the artist created a lot of classroom-intended materials, downloadable e-books, and the aura of his particular style is embossed into each element. It is important to note that this website was created with the purpose to help the students with special learning differences, so the author really took into the account the emotional aspect of learning and growing up. All three are very easy to navigate and creating comic books can be very addictive, whichever you choose. I am sure there are more such websites, so I encourage you to do the research. In the meantime, let me explore the potential of using these in the classroom, especially looking from the lens of dyslexia-friendly approaches and techniques. Experiential learningEven the grandfather of education, J.J. Rousseau stressed the main method of learning at the very beginning of his canonical work Emile, or on Education: 'Don't teach, but let the child be instructed by experience'. This idea was carried on into the twentieth century and seriously developed by David Kolb, and has been developed and refined to date. What does that have to do with comic books? Well, until we can actually fly off with the aliens, meet the dinosaurs, or walk the streets of an imaginary town, we are confined to the interior of our classrooms, or the frame of our screens. And this is where the comic books pose a portal to the other reality. Creating a comic book provides a setting similar to experiential learning, because it contains design (thinking), creation (acting), characters, relationships, causes and consequences, as well as reflection and self-correction. It is a beta version of a possible reality. The students get to practice their skills embodied by characters. The biggest bonus is letting the imagination go loose, artistic expression, all in a funny and perhaps silly environment. Visual stimulationAnd how is all that relevant in an English class? Not only that the comic book caters to students with non-traditional learning styles, needless to say, it is highly visual. The images will imprint the verbal foreground more efficiently, as it will be a multi-sensory approach. We are also giving an opportunity to more creative students to show their talent off the 'pen-and-paper stage'. Working in pairs might be more fruitful if we pair up an imaginative student with a classmate who is skillful at writing, typing, or spelling. The 'comic duo' can shine even brighter if we give them a chance to share their work, after revision and editing, perhaps on the school notice board. The comic books can be quite simple, using familiar backgrounds, to enforce and practice vocabulary, for example. A simple series of 'indoor' house interior can help us practice daily routines, the rooms and furniture, or the prepositions. Possible activity ideas, that range from highly scaffolded and controlled, to creative and free, are:
To help your students navigate those first few months of confusing English grapheme-phoneme correlation, create a simple colour-coded poster to explain the most typical examples. If you have a chance to make it multi-textured, like a collage, it's even better! I used the alphabet arc as the foundation. The big letters are the ones with one-to-one correspondence. The colour coding follows a strategy I learned at the Future Learn Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching Course and it links the vowel in the name of the letter with the colour that carries the same vowel, e.g. A is gray B is green F is red I is white O is yellow Q is blue So the only one without its colour is R (they use black, but technically it's not the same vowel), so I used the rhyme R is a star - it's golden colour, and there is a small sparkling star in it. A lot of Moroccan students mix A, E, and I, then G and J, and they keep saying H, X, Y and R in the french way. So, I hope this trick will help them learn the names of the letters better. However, even more important is to teach them how to read certain sounds. So, the two posters below deal with the 'unpredictable' letters. Needless to say, these are not all to be presented to the students at once, and some words should be 'unraveled' at a later stage (follow the Orton-Gillingham phonemic progression chart). You can cover the potentially confusing word with a post-it, to keep their attention on the words and sounds you are covering at the moment. Which cognitive (and physical) faculties are involved in a writing process?
I have tried to create a writing process workflow, but I could never make it flow seamlessly. Instead, I have decided that the process of writing isn't as straight-forward as we would like it to be. We use some mental faculties at once, simultaneously, which is probably why most students with dyslexia find it exhausting. There are too many things to think about. However, we all agree that there are certain 'levels' or, for the sake of this metaphor, depths, of the writing process we can differentiate. Students face different challenges in each of these processes. For example, if the task is dictation, the student will have to hear the teacher, and differentiate the sounds, but if the task is to express original ideas, the student will have to listen to his own inner voice, and visualize different concepts. Tell me if you think the poster is missing some important challenges in the various depths of the ocean of writing.
And here is the interactive presentation of all these challenges, coupled with the suggestions of accommodation. Click on FULL SCREEN for best interactive experience.
What are the main points to keep in mind when planning reading and writing tasks?
How should we make it easier for the student who has a problem with reading or writing? The general accommodation principles apply, but there are some specific to these two types of skills, that are particularly challenging for students with dyslexia.
Activities and accommodations in the classroom whit one or a few students with dyslexia.
Points to remember when designing and conducting the activities. |
AuthorMartina Matejaš is a teacher of English and Yoga. She is keen on understanding the mind-body connection as well as cracking the 'code' of thoughts-emotions-behaviour matrix. Archives
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