Techleaders

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 * Techleaders Group/8Y34 Lab 2: Place your cursor BELOW the three lines. Type in your Activity Types Reviews below. Then place a line under your entry.**

**Eric R** **Photo Essays – I Spy Stories:** I Spy stories help students build vocabulary skills by providing them with visual cues that involve word play. The goal is to identify something in a picture by being given hints from a riddle. I could see myself using this with younger children (k-2), especially with the students who have trouble with speech and vocabulary. I would assess students by using a rating scale that would allow me to rate their oral ability as well as their ability to identify written vocabulary. This would best be done over a longer period of time so the improvements the child are easily seen.

Ashley Fidlin Acrostic poems are words written vertically on the left hand side of the page. Typically, adjective are chosen to represent each letter of the word. This activity can be used for differentiated instruction to help students write within the lines of the page in primary grades as well as provide an opportunity for students to improve their vocabulary by using the thesaurus and dictionary. Acrostic poems can help the teacher assess the students understanding of the particular parts of speak and can use acrostic poems for facilitating more creative forms of written expression.

Julie Benner

There are many interactive ways activity types can help you prepare tech enhanced lessons for students. Character webs are an activity type that help students understand a character’s action and motivation by identifying a trait central to the character. Since the Webs are a structured way to organize ideas and facts, students can display concepts and relationships between characters in a visible and easy to comprehend way. Character webs are also great to show character development from beginning of the story to end; This is especially helpful in more complex stories! Webs provide a structure for ideas and facts that help students learn to organize and prioritize information. Character Webs are great for students working independently or in small groups.

Christa M An ePhoto Album is a great way to get your students to display their lives without cutting up pictures and buying expensive albums etc. They allow you to compose pages in an online album, incorporating everything from photos, movies, music etc. This great activity can be done individually or as a group project. I would use this in my classroom for many different topics. You could use this to get the students to get to know each other and have them share their ePhoto albums with their class. Another fun thing would be to have students design an ePhoto Album on a research project. I would assess my students on their ability to incorporate different pictures, music and general flow of the album ___ Jenna M

MadLibs is a fantastic activity that can be used for younger grades. This is a type of fill-in-the-blank activity where students must fill in the missing words of a story. The students are required to fill in the spaces by thinking of different parts of speech, such as verbs, adverbs, nouns, adjectives, proper names, etc. After the list of words is complete, one person inserts these words into the story. MadLibs is a fun activity because you never know how the story will turn out! I think this would be a great activity to use in a language classroom, especially after the students have been learning about the different parts of speech. Even though this is a quick activity, it can be used to assess whether the students have a firm grasp of the different parts of speech and whether or not they know how to use them appropriately. _

Heather M

I chose "Place" Stories as an activity type. This is an activity described by Tom Banaszewski in 2002 as one where students get an opportunity to write about a place that has meaning for them, and one where they feel comfortable and at ease. In a detailed way, the student can talk about how he or she feels about this particular place and why it is so special to them. Then, they attach one image that enhances their description, and this becomes the centerpiece of their story. I think this type of descriptive story could be used as a writing exercise perhaps at the beginning of the year as a way to get to know students by learning what they value and appreciate. Also, it would be a great tool for self-reflection and for assessing a student's vocabulary and grammar.

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Christina A

An acrostic poem starts with a simple word (often a name or an object) written vertically down the left hand side of a page. Then, by using each letter in the word, adjectives are chosen to describe the name or object. This activity is great to teach parts of speech (especially adjectives) to a primary class, as it allows students to practice their knowledge and understanding of adjectives while giving them the opportunity to express themselves creatively. It also gives students a chance to practice using a thesaurus! While students are creating their poems, the teacher can assess a student’s understanding of what an adjective is, as well as whether they are choosing adjectives that make sense and fit the description of their name or object.

Stephanie D

The activity I selected was Character Webs. A character web is used to identify the traits of main character(s) within a story. It can help explain the characters actions and motivations, or show how a character will develop throughout a story. I can see myself using a character web with students to describe a central character in a piece of literature we are studying or when developing a character for a story they are writing. With character webs I would assess the different aspects/traits of the character that students included in their webs and how evolved they have made their character.

Vanessa M.

The activity I chose to look at is ephoto album stories. This activity has the students create a digital story and/ or movie using photos (digital photos, scanned images, yearbook or old family movies) that tell a story about the student’s life. The student would either add background music or record a narrative to explain how the image relates to the students life story. I can see myself using this activity in my classroom for a social studies lesson in a primary grade looking at discussing “all about me” topics. It can also be a great way to practice oral communication skills of creating meaning to a story. An aspect of this activity I can asses would be using a rubric to assess the students use of words to describe the story. The student would be making connections and explaining using language to communicate the meaning of each image through oral communication.

Jennifer M

A character web is a tool that organizes ideas regarding stories, characters, genres, and ideas. It is visually appealing (using Inspiration) for students to see how they can organize their thoughts and ideas in a web form to separate character development as their story proceeds. Character maps are great to use in a classroom because as a teacher students can work individually or in group to summarize ideas. I could use a character map in a lesson to compare and analyze students' stories and have them use character maps to brain storm ideas before students write a full story. In order to assess character maps I could use them in accordance with a checklist type of assessment. I would be able to visually see if students understand how to create different aspects of the story they are creating by looking at their map to see if they followed instructions carefully and accurately.

Sarah Hardt

An I Spy Story is designed to help students develop their prediction skills and vocabulary through the use of visual cues and word play. Pages of the storybook each use a riddle to direct the students toward what they should be locating within the picture, which is also included on each page of the storybook. The riddles always follow an aabb pattern of rhyming, with four beats per line. An exmple of how this might be used in a classroom can be found at []. This website provides children with the directions that could be used to write their own riddles to the accompanying pictures, but also allows students to select a book and try to find the objects. This tool could be used in more than one way as an assessment tool. Students could be directed toward choosing a specific book/image and write their own riddles for those pages, or, students could try to solve the riddles and record their answers.

Chelsea W.

Character webs are a great tool to organize your thoughts and ideas about a character, story etc. Using the web students can organize their thoughts to make the information more useful. Using inspiration 8 you can also add pictures to give students a visual representation of their ideas. A great way to use character webs is to show the growth of a character as they change throughout the story due to events that have taken place. Assessing a students use of a character web can be done using levels. Demonstrating to students that a level 1 character web is very vague while a level four character web is highly detailed. Taking a step further from this stuents can then enter the world of inferencing looking at the various traits they have pulled from the character. Overall I think its a great tool that can be used in a wide range of grades going from simple to more complex.

Ashley Lim

Teachers can use Acrostic Poetry to help younger students expand their vocabulary and be creative through different multimedia outlets. An Acrostic Poem is when you write different adjectives, and the first letter of each adjective makes up its own word. The adjectives are generally describing words for something like a students name. A student would take their name and write one letter on each line of a page. They would then choose adjectives and describing words that begin with each letter. As a teacher I could assess whether students chose appropriate describing words, as well as if they followed the instructions for the multimedia assignment. You could use different programs such as paint or even Inspiration.

Jon Hallett

The activity type that I chose was a Photo Essay. Photo Essays are a way assist the student in the development of their writing skills. Essentially the student selects the topic that they would like to write about. From this they then select 3 or 4 photo's and write a short description about the photo and what is happening. This helps the student focus their thoughts better, as well as helping them elaborate their thoughts more. I can definately see myself using this is early Junior grades to help them focus their ideas, so that their stories aren't all over the place. Also I think it'd be a neat idea to get the students to manipulate the photo's to integrate the arts (visual arts). I would use a self assessment to assess the students, which will help them understand how to write more descriptive essays. I would also assess them based on how descriptive them can be from the original photos.

B. L.

I chose the ePhoto Albums. These ePhoto Albums allow students to tell their life stories through using personal images and adding music to produce creative interactive stories. I could see myself using this in the classroom because it allows students to be creative and individual, by self-selecting music and images that best represent them. One aspect of the activity that I would be assessing would be the technicallity of adding music and image together for a smooth transition.

Mike d'Esterre An acrostic poem is a poem in which special letters spell another word. This is done by choosing which word you would like to have on your vertical base line then creating words or sentences that begin with each of those letters that describe the chosen word. Not all students enjoy poetry, including myself, but I remember when I was younger that I did enjoy creating an acrostic poem. I would use this type of poem during a particular special time of the year such as Christmas or Halloween. I would have the students’ brainstorm words that are associated with my selected theme word and write these on the board. A rough copy is a must and I would check to see that they are ready to being their good copy. I would have the students find a picture of their selected word and have them do their poem on that. I would encourage tons of creativity and display them in the hallway when completed. I would assess the students use of creativity and over display of the acrostic poem.  Sarah Bishop I like the idea of ePhoto books. I would use this at the beginning of the year as a way to get to know my students! This will give me an idea of who they are, where they come from and what their background is and will help me to understand them better (and their needs and interests). I might also use this during the year if we did a big project or field trip, that way all of the students could be involved in designing this, I would assess their participation (if they posted), and the quality of their contribution (could be they've added captions, additional pictures etc). They could have roles (picture take, recorder, graphic designer, etc).