Technology Activities
Thinking Outside the Box Focusing on Figure 19
Session Description
Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading Lessons by Tanny McGregor
Overview
Inferring, questioning, determining importance. It's not easy to explain these abstract reading strategies to elementary readers, yet knowing how they work and how to use them is an important first step to connecting with texts. Fortunately Tanny McGregor has developed visual, tangible, everyday lessons that make abstract thinking concrete and that can help every child in your classroom make more effective use of reading comprehension strategies.
Comprehension Connections is a guide to developing children's ability to fully understand texts by making the comprehension process achievable, accessible, and incremental. McGregor's approach sequences stages of learning for each strategy that take students from a fun object lesson to a nuanced and lasting understanding. Her lessons build bridges between the concrete and the abstract by incorporating writing, discussion, song, art, and movement into a web of creative connections that reinforce each strategy on a variety of levels. All the while Comprehension Connections offers an inside look at the dynamic of McGregor's teaching, showing you how her ideas look in action, and including the language she uses and that she encourages her students to use as they build their facility with:
- schema
- inferring
- questioning
- determining importance
- visualizing
- synthesizing.
Songs to teach inference and summary
Songs are a great way to interest the students, AND you can develop so many concepts through songs and song lyrics.
Lee Brice – I Don’t Dance
Katy Perry – Firework
Nico Vinz - Am I Wrong
Kenny Chesney - Life on a Rock
OneRepublic – Love Runs Out
Idina Menzel - Let it Go
Websites and Resources
Cartoon creation and making your own comic strips: http://professorgarfield.pixton.com
Polling and assessment tool: http://socrative.com
Program to save YouTube videos to a computer or storage device to acccess when you don't have internet or YouTube available: http://www.keepvid.com
Free Educational Videos: http://www.watchknowlearn.org
http://www.mensaforkids.org/lessons/musicaltour/mfklessons-musicaltour-all.pdf
http://allaccesspassblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/teaching-figurative-language/
Literary Techniques Video http://youtu.be/mEeSdFbD3xU
Convert videos to MP3 audio file: http://snipmp3.com/
Pictures and videos to provoke questions and thoughts : http://www.101qs.com