Differentiation With Pinterest: Promote Personalized Reading Plans

Pinterest.com has emerged on the social media scene with a million and one uses, but one of the best ways to take advantage of this tech tool is for differentiation to build students' reading confidence and interest. When we face the challenge of having unskilled or reluctant readers in our classrooms, Pinterest.com can help us organize reading selections for individual students. Unlike other bookmarking tools, Pinterest.com is more visual.  Imagine, a virtual cork board and the ability to have as many cork boards as you want. A teacher using Pinterest.com can create various virtual bulletin boards for as many topics as he/she would like, e.g.  a board showcasing vocabulary definitions and examples, a board with links to pieces of literature, a board with non fiction selections or showing examples of grammar in context...you get the idea. After adding the Pinterest.com bookmarklet to your browser, as you browse the web and find content you like, you can "pin" the content to the Pinterest.com cork board of your choice.  

For teachers, this means as you search for high interest content for reluctant readers, you can organize the content by category or even create personalized boards for each student adding content catered specifically for the student's specific learning needs.

What's even better about this site is the ability for users to "repin" content, which means that if a student enjoys a particular pin the teacher recommended, using his/her own Pinterest account, he/she will then be able to add it to his/her own pinboard. "Repinning" becomes a sort of virtual recommendation of content, and we all know students will listen to their peers' recommendations any day over ours. The trick is to find interesting content to catch students' attention so that then they will repin and promote the content to their classmates.

I have started a Pinterest.com Board for Vocabulary to teach Literary Terms, and a Common Core Reading Selections Board for Grades K-12. I have started pins linked to the high interest content for all grade level readers recommended by the ELA K-12 Common Core Standards. Anyone is welcomed to "repin" the content! Pinterest requires an invitation only sign up, but invites are sent promptly. Hope you'll follow me on Pinterest.com  and begin pinning with your students!
http://pinterest.com/fearlesstech/


Also check out Edutopia's Five-Minute Film Festival on a million more uses for Pinterest!
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-pinterest-teaching-learning

Fuzzynyms: The Lexicon of Learning Connotation Using Lexipedia!

Regardless of the grade or subject, all teachers teach vocabulary, but how often do students struggle with learning the lexicon of a particular subject or with just understanding what words to use to express themselves more precisely and succinctly in speech and writing.

All of the vocabulary web tools I will be sharing in the next couple of posts support different aspects of vocabulary instruction. 

While wordstash.com offers digital flashcards, and practice games and quizzes, Lexipedia.com provides color coded word webs connecting the word to its definition(s), part(s) of speech, synonym(s), antonym(s), and its fuzzynym(s) or word slightly related in meaning. This concept of Fuzzynym can be difficult for students to understand. However, fuzzynyms, (I guess a word coined by Lexipedia) are an important lexical component of vocabulary building so students learn the connotation or nuance words carry. When I teach vocabulary, I not only teach the basics, but I also teach the positive, negative or neutral effect of words. Students benefit from learning these so called fuzzynyms so they can learn about the importance of semantics (meaning), and how meaning can change drastically for better or worse if a writer or speaker carelessly chooses his/her words. Mean what you say, but say what you mean by choosing your words carefully is what I tell my students!

When students learn about the connotation of words by analyzing written and non-written texts, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me", takes on an entirely different meaning. Students begin to realize the power words have to suggest, influence, and persuade us, and they become more conscious about their own word choices. 

In our world of 140 characters or less, understanding the connotation of words through Lexipedia's "fuzzynyms" offers a way for students to discover the importance of semantics and the power of our words to express and grasp meaning.  

Peachy Keen Presentations!

Have you heard of http://photopeach.com/ ? It's just a peachy site! Students will be able to upload images, choose music to complement the image, add a brief description and voila, there's an amazing slideshow presentation!  Imagine the possibilities in your classroom! Students can use http://photopeach.com/ to summarize a text they have read, using images and sound that capture the main idea or theme of the text. They can create images of various steps in a math problem, upload these, and then add text to explain each step and solution. What about uploading images, music and text to demonstrate their knowledge about a historical or scientific event, or notable figure? Creating a slideshow to showcase a writer, define literary terms, vocabulary, or book genres won't be the pits anymore! Photopeach.com is sweet! 

Hope you'll check it out and share how you used this easy tech tool in the classroom! Endless possibilities!

See my photopeach sample featuring the web tool logos of tech tools I've talked about, and those you can look forward to learning about in future posts.

The Evolution of Vocabulary Instruction: Fotobabble.com

So on Monday, you assign your students 20 vocabulary words; give them a menu of tried and true vocabulary exercises on Tuesday to challenge them to learn and use the words throughout the week; test them on Friday, yet half the students fail the vocabulary test. A month later, most students say they have never heard those words in their entire lives.  Does this routine sound familiar? 


In many ways, how are we still living in the stone age when it comes to vocabulary instruction? How can we evolve our vocabulary instruction to the next level?


What benefits result from assigning long lists of vocabulary words that students have never seen and cannot pronounce? In what ways do we ensure students continue to use the vocabulary they learn in and out of the classroom?

Fotobabble can revolutionize how we teach vocabulary! Students can choose or create an image to show how it represents the meaning of a word; they can use  artwork, photos, original drawings, etc. Students can scan graphic organizers to analyze a word, and record themselves explaining the graphic organizer. The possibilities are endless! 


How do our students benefit from vocabulary worksheets and workbooks?  Are these resources working to help students internalize words if we are only requiring them to fill in blanks to memorize words for a weekly test, and never see, hear or use the words again? 


Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can’t Read:What Teachers Can Do (http://www.amazon.com/When-Kids-Cant-Read-Teachers/dp/0867095199) shares an interesting teacher experiment proving students feel overwhelmed “learning, using and remembering” long lists of words if they have never seen the words, and never hear their teachers use the words in a meaningful, relevant context. Beers suggests students learn more words when teachers focus on fewer words and model the word for students in everyday classroom speech.

Here’s where www.fotobabble.com comes in:

Fotobabble.com is a site that allows you to upload images and add your voice to an image. 

How can you fearlessly use this web 2.0 tool in your classroom?

Whenever you teach vocabulary, you can use fotobabble so students can upload a visual cue for a vocabulary word and record their voice to:

• define the vocabulary word.
• use the word in context in an original sentence, or paragraph.
• explain multiple examples for the vocabulary word, such as connotation, pronunciation, spelling, part(s) of speech, suffixes, prefixes, roots, synonyms, antonyms.
• use context as a clue revealing the word’s meaning.
• use other words that share the same root, prefix, suffix as the word being studied.
• use the word in different contexts.
• compare and contrast the word to other words to reveal relationships between particular words.
• explain the graphic organizer that analyzes the word.
• share an excerpt from a fiction or non fiction passage where the word is used.
• use the word to create a figure of speech.
• use the word to create an analogy.

These are just a few ways to use Fotobabble, but most importantly use fotobabble so STUDENTS LEARN HOW TO CREATE THEIR OWN CONTENT!
Fotobabble allows teachers and students to create critical thinking activities that include voice and imagery, guaranteed to improve vocabulary skills. When students have the opportunity to create their own content, they are collaborating with peers and experiencing multiple opportunities to see, hear and use vocabulary.  

Research shows students do not make any gains on vocabulary sections of standardized tests because they are not internalizing vocabulary if they never hear the words used again in the classroom. (http://www.reading.org/General/Publications/Books/BK698.aspx) 

Poor readers have poor vocabulary, and longs lists of words kids can't even pronounce and may never see or hear again produce nothing but boredom and frustration! Learning new words should be exciting for students, not a tedious chore!

Please share how you have used Fotobabble to teach vocabulary!

Check out the lesson plan in the lesson plan section, and the Fotobabble tutorial by anamariacult so you can begin to change the way you teach vocabulary. Whatever the subject, or grade level, we all teach vocabulary, and Fotobabble can help our students improve their vocabulary skills!