Workout 13

Here is the case that I'll be dealing with: Ben has low vision and as a result has difficulty reading printed text. He needs documents to be magnified greatly in order for him to be able to read them, or he can have the documents read to him.
Here is the activity from my first artifact proposal: Teach 3-year-olds how to identify objects by shapes and colors.

If this child were in my classroom, I would first off make sure that they had a computer readily available to them. Second, I would use the Large Print Service that is available to use on computers such as the ones in our W200 lab room. But it seems that any computer with the updated version of Windows Vista should have the Large Print Service on their computer. I would use the service to magnify any reading or activities that were being done in class so that the disabled student can do the same activities as the other students. When it comes to the specific activity listed above, I would still use the service to write out the names of the shpaes and colors. Then I would magnify the pictures of the objects that they are supposed to be able to identify using these shapes and colors. Another thing I could do is to bring in the objects and let the disabled child feel and touch them so they know exactly what it is that they are supposed to identify using only colors and shapes.

Workout - Productivity

I think every tool we've used in this class will help us as teachers to increase student's productivity. We've learned how to use so many new tools that will help us to teach in a more effective and efficient way. Below I'll summarize how a few of the tools we've used will increase productivity:

• Comment tool in Word: Before this class, I never knew that this tool even existed. This is a great way to give students feedback in an effective way, without taking the time of sitting down with every student and going through their papers, assignments, etc. This will save time, which increase efficiency. This is also a great tool because the teacher can make comments on a class project, worksheet, etc. and it can be avaliable to every student without having to make copies for every student.
• Google documents: This to me is the best tool that we've learned to use since being in this class. It is a great way for students to work together on the same project, and also publish their individual projects and share with their classmates or whomever they choose. I think this tool increases productivity because it helps with effectiveness because the students can do the work themselves, and with each other, so they'll be more interested because it will be "their own" work.
• Delicious.com: This is a great site for people of all ages. It is a way of organizing your favorite sites on the Internet without having to try and remember all of them. I think this could be helpful for students because if their doing a research project, they can save all of their sources (websites) to their Delicious account and it will be organized neatly for them instead of each child having to keep their sources organized on their own, and risk losing valuable information.
  

Production Evaluation

Names- Julie Stelzer, Kelsey M. Deckard, Ellie Salky
Production Name- Your Hometown Digital Scrapbook

Acadmic Standard: 1.3.4: Identify and describe physical features* and human features* of the local community including home, school and neighborhood.

• relative location: the location of a place in relation to another place or places
• physical features: geographic features that occur in nature, such as land and water forms, natural vegetation and wildlife
• human features: features created by humans, such as buildings, cities, roads and farms

Technology Standard: Technology Operations and Concepts- Students demostrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.

Benefits:
Individual Responsibilty- Each student will be responsible for providing pictures of his or her idea of his hometown to accurately portray a personal idea of the cultural aspects of the area.
Group Responsibilty- Evalute each picture and how it is an accurate representation of the definition of a hometown.
This allows the students to make decisions as to what they would like to use to represent their living accomodations in their town. Students can use imaginative skills to create and use any type of image they would like to represent their town. They must communicate with group members and amongst classmates to evaluate the images and discuss their significance. Using basic public speaking skills, the students will convey their idea in the form of a scrapblog in front of their peers for evaluation. In order to creat such a scrapblog, the students will actively engage in asthetic reasoning in order to create an eye pleasing slideshow by making decisions as to the organization of the images and where they would be appropriately placed.
Disadvantages:
Students may disagree on the definition and representation of a hometown depending on where they are from and how they are raised. Nonetheless, this will lead to useful debate and discussion and perhaps open the children's minds to new ideas and cultures.


Instruct:
We would begin with basic lecture and discussion about indentifying physical features that define your local community as a hometown. Also, a short discussion about the generalities of a hometown will be necessary. No physical teaching tools are necessary for this portion of the lesson. However, it would be beneficial to have visual aides such as pictures and references to hometowns in relatable situations such a movies and other popular culture situations.
For the activity itself, the website for the scrapblog (scrapblog.com) will be needed as well as a computer lab or at least one computer per group to use for limited internet access and image production programs that may be used to alter their images approriately.

Evaluate:
The categories that were chosen to evalute the students on are based on what would accurately represent an aquired knowledge related to the given standards.
Rubric

Lesson Plan - Searching for Letters, Words, and Sentences

This is the link to the lesson plan/activity that I viewed and evaluated:

http://www.indianastandardsresources.org/files/eng/ela_1_1_2.pdf

Lesson Plan:
This lesson plan is for first grade English. It teaches students to identify letters, words, and sentences, and how to distinguish between them. The activity has the students categorize letters, words, and sentences into the appropriate group either on their own paper, or with the teacher on the chalkboard. For the assessment, students work with a simple Seek-and-Find activity from the Black Line Master (BLM) book. In the activity, students are given six sentences and are asked to underline or circle in different colors (one for letters, one for words, etc.) which are words, which are letters, and which are sentences. This lesson plan also includes questions available for the teacher to ask students while walking around and watching them do the Seek-and-Find.

Evaluation:
I think this is a great activity for students at the first grade level. It is a great way to make sure the students understand the differences between letters, words, and sentences. The lesson plan makes sure the students understand the importance of this activity by repetition with working with letters, words, and sentences. I would not make changes to this lesson plan because I think it follows all three E's. It is efficient because it is repeticious, so it helps the teacher save time from having to cover the same material over and over again throughtout the year. It is effective because it teaches students the difference between letters, words, and sentences, which is the foundation for English-Language Arts. It is also enhanced by technology because you are using two resources (chalkboard and BLM) instead of just standing in front of the class and talking about the material. It gets the students involved, which is by far the best way to teach something as important as this.