Listening for Literacy Update 12.12.12

Listening for Literacy Update

12.12.12

This has been an interesting experiment. There are students who are religiously listening every night, and those who sporadically listen.  As we are assessing some of the material on the MP3 players we are noticing a slight growth in sight words. I also had a student reference one of the stories during class, saying that the word we were working on was in the story. It is nice to see them making connections. I have made a few procedural changes with my older students. I have two folders on the wall, one for reading logs that are completed and one for blank ones. I now have the students switching out their own reading logs. This has saved me a little bit of time. It also has them taking on a little more responsibility. The older students are starting to request novels, for pleasure reading. I struck the deal,  that if they are doing the required work, I will put on the audio version of a novel one chapter at a time, provided that they check out the actual book from the library. So far I have four students reading Harry Potter books, and one Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I think that over the winter break I will put on the book in the entirety with the hope that they will finish it over the two week break. We have had only one technology failure, in a pair of suddenly non-working headphones. These were replaced with a pair from the dollar store. Getting the MP3 player back to students at the end of the day has almost become routine for me. I now posses a large basket and traipse around the hallways shoving bags into lockers. We are still problem solving about how to charge them over the break. Many students have a way to charge via usb, either  their family owns a computer, a cell phone charger with usb, or a wii. Some students will have our limited chargers go home with them over the break. I hope that this project shows the results that we are excited about!

-Stacy