We chose to focus on the profile of a student with reading comprehension challenges at a Junior High level. This student would be a reluctant reader, since he/she does not derive any pleasure, enjoyment or information from reading. Decoding challenges could be an accompanying concern, as well, ESL or limited experiences could also be contributing factors in comprehension.
Our goal was to engage the student and support their understanding (visuals, auditory support, questioning techniques, definitions of unfamiliar vocabulary).
We decided on a digital story, written by Mark Twain in 1906, called "A Horse's Tale". The vocabulary would be rather tricky for the students of today, so we really considered how we could make the text more meaningful to the student, as we added little touches to the document.
Since Mark Twain wrote this story so long ago, we wanted to provide some information about the author before the reading was to begin. We added a sticky note to explain how to double click on the blue line under the name "Mark" (where we had attached a hyperlink) and the student would be taken to Youtube video to see, listen and learn about Mark Twain the author.
We placed another sticky note before the passage for the student to read indicating that they are about to read the story from the viewpoint of the horse.
We were really impressed that the sticky notes could be read aloud.
To ensure the student was attending to the story, we added a few bubble notes: a true and false question about Buffalo Bill's appearance and a multiple choice question about the number of horses he owned.
Since the vocabulary was quite dated and probably unfamiliar to the student, we added bookmarks with written text that could be read aloud and audio recordings describing the unfamiliar vocabulary.
We added all of the words from the text to the Word Prediction bank of words for any written expectations.
We converted the entire text to MP3 so the student would have a mobile audio recording of the story.
Although Paul was in another setting, we continued to chat with him throughout the development of our documents. We shared information and troubleshooted together. Very exciting experience.
I am not sure which feature is my favourite. I think it is amazing that we could hyperlink a word to a YouTube video. I also thought the bubble notes are a really smart idea.
The one thing Shelley and I wanted to do, was link a picture to a word. We couldn't figure that one out yet.
All in all, working together, virtually in an interactive, intuitive program, was a hoot!
I also like the Tip of Day when you open up Kurzweil.
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