Group items tagged

"Basically Rewordify takes a block of text or website and replaces difficult words and phrases with text that is easier to understand. The site claims that this helps students read more, understand difficult English faster, and learn words in new ways. I'd throw in that the site can help you and your students break down difficult primary documents." Rewordify tool as primary document decoder

Do you teach struggling readers? No matter the content area that you teach, student success is often defined by literacy. Reading comprehension and vocabulary frequently act as roadblocks that prevent students from grasping difficult concepts. Rewordify is a tool that will help you ignore this roadblock, and even teach reading comprehension and vocabulary when used appropriately. I initially read about the tool from this blog post (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/08/rewordify-helps-students-read-complex.html#.UhuJ79KsiSp). If you don't have time to check out that entire post, here is a brief summary of the tool and a few possible uses for it: Tool Description: This online tool allows the user to input a chunk of text and replaces all the "hard words" with synonyms. This seems like a spectacular tool to promote reading comprehension across the content areas. Here a just a couple ways you could use this tool. * Have you found a website with incredible information, but the reading level is way too high for your students? Have the students use Rewordify and make the reading level more appropriate for your students. * This could be a great tool to teach new vocabulary and reading comprehension. Here's one idea on how to do this: o Have students read a passage and highlight/underline/annotate the passage, including making notes of the words that they don't understand. Then, have the students summarize what they have read. Input the same text into rewordify and have the students read and summarize what they have read a second time. Compare the two summaries and discuss any similarities/differences. Now, have the students create definitions for the words that were highlighted (Students cannot use the provided synonym when completing this portion of the activity). William Berry Dept. of Organizational Development, Quality and Innovation Moody Middle School ITRT - (804) 261-5015 http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/techtips/ http://blogs.henrico.k12.v

"Flows of Reading takes this process to the next level. We have created a rich environment designed to encourage close critical engagement not only with Moby-Dick but a range of other texts, including the children's picture book, Flotsam; Harry Potter; Hunger Games; and Lord of the Rings. We want to demonstrate that the book's approach can be applied to many different kinds of texts and may revitalize how we teach a diversity of forms of human expression.  We look at many different adaptions and remixes of Moby-Dick from the films featuring Gregory Peck and Patrick Stewart as Ahab to MC Lar's music video, "Ahab" and Pitts-Wiley's Moby-Dick: Then and Now stage production to works that evoke Moby-Dick less directly, including Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and Battlestar Galacitca's "Scar." "

"Welcome to the Documentation site for Voyant Tools, a web-based text analysis and reading environment. Here you will find some help for getting started, more complete documentation for tools (including a collection of screencasts), useful resources (tutorials, workshops, examples), and general information about Voyant Tools." Amazing textual analysis tool. View word frequency, word relationships and more. H/T Tom

"While preparing for the upcoming school year, Twisted Sister's epic protest song began playing as I read the Declaration of Independence. Obviously my mind drifted to imagined Thomas Jefferson and John Adams letting their hair down and dancing around the streets of Philadelphia during a break from drafting the epic document. I realized then that I serendipitously uncovered something that I could use in the classroom - pairing music to primary documents to demonstrate understanding!" Taylor - I read this and immediately thought of you. Assignment for student - Remix the text of a primary document or famous historical speech with a song or multiple songs that add to the theme of the document/speech. Example included in the post.

This site allows students to create virtual exhibits using photos and text. Recommended for writing.

We should be creating similar setups for novels with a richer multimedia association and annotated primary texts.

"Mark talked about the idea of using Evidence-Based Arguments as a starting point. Every historical investigation needs to begin with a great question. Then they asked kids to do research and create videos. But what they got was disappointing. What they got was basically text with pictures, a script with a background. It wasn't a story, it wasn't engaging, and it often didn't really answer the question.  They begin to realize that they needed to learn more about how to create high-quality documentaries, how to use images and video to actually tell a story. And eventually they came up with a Four Step Process that students work through to create high-quality documentaries:" 4 Step Process for creating HST videos. I don't necessarily agree with the author's thought that tech should not be introduced until step #4, as tech can enhance 1-3 just as well. The teacher just needs to model good behavior and help students develop structures for the work in these phases for it to be successful.

"Set up your own private area for creating and playing interactive stories and text-based games. Find out more"

"FluencyTutor for Google is a new offering from Texthelp. FluencyTutor for Google is a Chrome web app (works on Chromebook, PC, Mac) that allows teachers to share selected reading passages with their students. Students can hear the passages read aloud. The text being read aloud is highlighted to help students follow along with the reading" Might be useful for ESL and SPED classes

"This site lets you use a Bookworm database to read Obama's State of the Union in the context of all the other State of the Union messages given by American presidents. For any word in the message, just click on the text: the word will turn red. If you want to search a two-word phrase, just highlight both words. (You can't search for phrases longer than two words)."

Gives the language learner the ability to read or listen to text with translation only as needed. Also includes videos and songs with lyrics. It creates a wordlist and flashcards so the student can master the new vocab.

"Textual analysis has its limitations, of course, but word counting can illuminate the tendencies of writers in a way that word reading may not." Textual analysis leads to a discussion on author's style. You could do this type of activity with various Word Cloud Generators.