Monday, January 17, 2011

Differentiated instruction using ipod touch

R. is a student in my 5th grade class who moved here from Japan at the beginning of the school year.  He arrived knowing very little English but goes to ELL each day – but not during reading time.  As I am returning to my 5th grade, this is a subject area where R. continues to struggle.  The class uses a Houghton text and often has a “packet” of activities about the reading to complete.  The teacher works with a small group while the rest of the class works independently on the packet.  R. sometimes works on something from ELL or Rosetta Stone and I am wondering if there is an opportunity to help R. using the ipod touch and Google translate as demonstrated by Jane in our first class.  At this time, I do not have wireless access at school, but I am working on that.  As a first step, I would like to be able to get the homework assignment (usually modified) translated into Japanese and sent home by email to R.’s mom, who reads and writes English pretty well.  Right now R. usually brings home the same homework as everyone else and my master teacher tries to remember to write a note home about the modifications and what to focus on, but it is difficult with 31 students in our class.


H. is a bright boy who has significant difficulty with writing.  He attends special ed to get help with writing skills as he gets so frustrated during writing, he completely melts down.  I am wondering if letting him use the ipod and the Dictation app could be helpful as it gets his ideas down by speaking and then the written version could be sent to an email or Google doc for him to continue.  Getting started seems to be the biggest hurdle.


C. is a quiet and bright girl in my class who has is looking for opportunities to have her thinking extended in science.  C is asking for more difficult science experiments or opportunities to learn something beyond the Foss kits.  Is there an opportunity for me to use the ipod to help her get there?  Even using Google to research erosion and deposition from our lab last week might help extend the lesson for her.
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2 comments:

  1. AwaveJanuary 17, 2011 at 5:07 PM

    Wow, I think all of your ideas are exciting in their potential. In my own recent blog post (A Wave Learning) I talked a little bit about the potential I thought an app called StoryKit would have for a multilingual student in my main placement class. She is shy and I think capable of so much more than what I see her usually do in the classroom.

    Possibly, apps like StoryKit could be used for both of our whole classes to serve the individual students' different needs. Maybe both your student R. and H. could start stories using StoryKit to illustrate pictures, or, Dragon Dictation to start by speaking their ideas. Then, frustration would be limited for both students, especially if student R. at first had the freedom to use whatever language he wanted to write in and then have it translated to any language. Wouldn't it be neat if H. could speak the beginning of a story, have it translated for R., R. could continue the story, translate, back to H., etc?

    And, maybe C. could put the new science knowledge into a kind of a guide/story on the iPod, for example, find a picture of erosion and write or speak a caption explaining it, and then that could possibly be translated to send home to R.'s mom too?

    Thank you for extending my own thinking about these things.

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  2. JaneJanuary 17, 2011 at 8:54 PM

    Great ideas from Awave! There are also sites with lots of science videos.... and a child could find some of the interactive science websites where she could contribute to data collection for real scientific projects. Check out Dave's post about a science app he saw that looked great.

    So many possibilities!

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