Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Alternatives To Worksheets Book Review

I have 2 books that I really love using with my students. Alternatives To Worksheets and More Alternatives To Worksheets. These books have hands on activities for students that can be used with any subject. There are lots of ideas for centers and class presentations. These can be adapted for various levels. It has some patterns to copy for projects and uses inexpensive materials like sentence strips, construction paper, cereal boxes. The activities include pop ups, foldables, and more.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Teaching Sentence Writing

I have student who struggle with fine motor skills and this makes it difficult for them to write. I love using Pixwriter software. Pixwriter is software that allows you to build word banks with or without pictures. The student touches the word or picture and it puts the word on the screen. it allows students to work on capitalization and punctuation too. There are various options such has colored borders that can be used for nouns and verbs.It has the option of reading the sentence with various voice options or no voice. I like using it on the Smart Board. I build my word banks using words from our weekly story. I also have seen great improvement in my students when I dictate sentences to my beginning writers daily. I have a separate time to work on pencil skills. I use Pixwriter to get a composition grade. I can print it off and send home.