I want to start off with saying that the classroom I am teaching in has 3 ESL/ELL students in it. Last week i was observing the small group readings and was suprised. The book being introduced was called "The Picnic". The teacher simply asked if the students knew what a picnic was, and they DIDN'T. We explained to them it was like taking your food in a basket/bag, a blanket and something to drink with you to a park or outdoor area. Then you lay the blanket down and get your food out. This is called a picnic. The students seemed to understand but kept saying a spanish word that we weren't familiar with.
Up to that point I was thinking to myself ...."these students probably know what a picnic is and are just not sure how to say it and not familiar with the word. Right then the teacher pulled out her Ipad and looked up the word they were saying, and how to say picnic in spanish...we came up with "comer en la campo", which means 'eat in the camp/field/land'. The student immediately knew what we were talking about and going to read more about.
I was stunned at how fast and accurate this Ipad was able to help this student during a quick 15 minute reading group. In that time they were able to warm up with a book read, introduce a new book, look up how to say picnic, and read the new book. This Ipad I realize is not just one technology tool to use, but one tool with many other tools within.
I'm determined to buy an Ipad now or get one at Christmas. There are so many tools at your fingertips that I can't wait to explore.
On another note.....
While teaching today I wanted to see what kind of things I could find on Christopher Columbus, since we were reading about him in a book. I found my information, and then kept searching around finding new websites that would be helpful with research projects.
One that I found was called Fact Monster.
http://childparenting.about.com/cs/k6education/a/schooltools.htm
It seemed to have a wide range of topics and I loved the fact that you could search for what you were looking for.
One other one I found was Visual Thesaurus: Thinkmap. This would help students with their writing and vocabulary usage. You simply type in a word like "happy" and then hit enter. A bunch of words start popping up webbing of the original word happy. You can try a trial for free for a certain amount of searches, but it requires a subscription eventually. One other thing it offers, that I think would be beneficial in a classroom, is Create and Share wordlists.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/trialover/
Anyways.....I'm outty
Thanks for sharing the great resources! Actually, we can not presume any more in our classrooms that everyone has the same background. Your story of using the iPad is perfect in terms of how we can use this tool for an instructional (and helpful communication) tool. Wow - glad that teachers are using them and you seeing them use them. We will be using the iPad later in this class.
ReplyDeletehttp://bigthink.com/ideas/40578
ReplyDeleteThis is a link where the author describes how soon, the 'little things' we want to know will not just be answered with a mouse-click, but just with a question directed at some gadget. I love visual thesaurus, and I found it to be a great tool when I was typing up English papers late in the evening. But soon, all we'll have to do to find a word is ask the iphone, or whatever we'll have in our pockets in the years to come.