Google Post Card Opportunity

Here is a terrific opportunity that Google is offering and proves to be a terrific authentic writing opportunity for children, teenagers, and adults. Basically, Google will mail the post card you create. From beginning writers to the most advanced, the art of sending a post card is not only fun, but socially relevant. Common, how cool is it to get a post card.

On the page:
Spread some holiday cheer, one card at a time.
Holiday cards

Sure, email is great, but there’s something uniquely heartwarming about the kind of card that comes in the actual mail — especially for folks who don’t hear from us as often as they should, simply because they aren’t online.

So we’ve made it as easy to send snail-mail holiday cards as it is to send email. Simply fill out the form below and we’ll send one free holiday postcard on your behalf. Yes, through the mail and everything.

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Literacy Instruction
for Individuals with Autism,
Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome
and Other Disabilities

Janice Light & David McNaughton
The Pennsylvania State University

Run, don’t walk to checking out this awesome website full of exemplars of students with complex communication needs learning to read and write.  The website comes out of the longitudinal research of Dr. Janice Light and Dr. David McNaughton.  Additionally, through Dynavox, they have published a curriculum called the ALL Curriculum – Accessible Literacy Learning.

I feel very fortunate to be weekly attending the research meetings for this project at the Pennsylvania State University.  It is a terrific experience to learn from such fantastic researchers.  From my special education background, I feel so thankful to think about new and old teachers being able to easily acquire high quality accessible literacy learning materials to support their instruction.

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Session Handout: a-writer-a-pencil-a-reason-and-a-teacher

WPRT ATIA Handout p1

WPRT ATIA Handout p2

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Samuel at the Inauguration

By going to www.myinauguralphoto.com, you too can pretend you were at the Inauguration.    Just saw this on the awesome TechCrunch and thought it was a neat simple motivational/ creative tool option for writing block that some of your students may be interested in using this resource.

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Just wanted to share that my team from this summer and I had some work published in the Closing the Gap Newspaper turned magazine in the current issue, which is October/November 2008.  We are thrilled to be able to share some of the insight from our work focusing on users of AAC and writing.

A Writer, a Pencil, a Reason and a Teacher (Actually no pencil required)

By Samuel Sennott, Christina Cahill, Shelly Major, Nicole Nordal, Charity Smith-Engelin, Cassie Rubenstein and Joslyn Silverman

Preview:
After six intense weeks of Nova Southeastern University’s TLC Summer Writing Camp for users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), one of our team members said about the students, “They love writing now! Look at them, they just can’t wait to do it.” The six-week camp was designed with the goal of helping users of AAC, ages 8 to 12, become better writers. The primary intent of the camp was to develop and implement systems, curriculum and materials that would help the students grow in the writing process, both now and into their next school year. A secondary goal was to look for potential research questions to be studied related to users of AAC and the writing process.

[View Full Article]

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Check out another generous offering by Byron Wilkes of Learning Magic Inc.  The exchange is filled with gems like this. The AEX or Intellitools Activity Exchange can be found at:  http://aex.intellitools.com

I saw the exchange was acting up, so here is the direct links to the resource on the Learning Magic Site.

Hoover’s New Wheels

enlarge image

This activity is based upon a true story about a dog named Hoover who unfortunately suffered a broken back in a ‘freak accident’. Paralyzed in the hind portion of his body, he was forced to hop along on his front legs. Well that was true until a colleague of mine and I were able to fit him with some “new wheels”. This activity helps illustrate that being in a wheelchair is not that limiting. Hoover has been an inspiration to many of us who know him. Even when he hopped along and dragged his legs behind him he continued to be happy and thrived in his environment. But now with his new wheels he is able to chase the pesky squirrels that live in his yard again.

This activity was built in Classroom Suite v. 3.2. The activity can be run on the ITAN Player. But IntelliPics Studio 3® is needed to perform data capture, automatic grading and portfolio management, as well as any editing or changes to the activity itself.

Required Software: IntelliTools Classroom Suite® v. 3.2.

Grades 3-5.  Curriculum area: Language Arts.   File size: 23 MB

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Check out this chart writing activity uploaded onto the Intellitools Activity Exchange by Byron Wilkes.

Required Software: IntelliTalk 3 or IntelliTools Classroom Suite Overlay Maker size: 831.93 Kilobytes uploaded: 09/26/2006

Created By: Byron O Wilkes
Skill Level: Grades K-2
Curriculum: Language Arts
Activity Details: This activity is based upon the Easy Writing Template and provides children with seven sentence endings to the Beginning sentence starter of “Independence Day Is…” Ending sentences include “watching fireworks”, “family picnics”, “watching the parade”, “the Fourth of July” etc.

Please note that the clip art used in this activity are from the Nova Development Art Explosion Collection of over 800,000 images. Reuse of these images in other activities prohibited by copyright law unless you own a copy of the aforementioned collection.

To learn more about the work that we are doing at Learning Magic Inc. in the areas of curriculum development etc. please visit our website at www.learningmagicinc.com.

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Connecting video to reading and writing is powerful. Last summer, I saw that power so clearly in the camp program I led. The camp was your basic extended year program revamped into a fun literacy based camp. One of the classrooms had mainly children with autism spectrum disorders. When we completed the pre-assessments, the students nearly threw the books back into our faces. There was at least a few tears during the developmental spelling test administered. Based on this initial assessment, I knew it was key to focus on the appreciation/enjoyment of literacy, so I turned to the self selected reading block. I brought in Apple laptops to each student and fired up the now classic Otis Goes to the Beach story. We showed it as a whole group to kick off the lesson. As you read, Otis comes to life with real videos of him getting ready for his walk, crying because he is so excited, swimming, and chewing. The children were transfixed. Every day, one particular student asked me why Otis is crying. Then he would say, “because he’s happy?” Within a few weeks, the students were reading PowerPoint based books on a daily basis and greatly enjoying it. One student who did not want to have anything to do with writing, started using PowerPoint to author because we could import pictures relevant to him. The rationale behind transitional texts is to draw the reader to attend to the text. I believe that connecting video can do this as well.

Yet, videos are not just for getting attention. They can be powerful for building background knowledge in both the reading and writing process. See a previous post that was regarding a guided reading lesson for Leo the Late Bloomer. Using YouTube can bring concepts to life. What a great way to do the activation of knowledge section of your guided reading lesson. Also the extensive Discovery Education/United Streaming site is rich with content.

Videos can motivate writing. The students in the AAC writers camp I am leading this summer are going wild for journaling about the videos they connect to. I believe that for my students, this is a perfect lead in to the SRSD strategy POW and TREE. Writing a persuasive essay about the video including a topic sentence, reasons, and an ending is potentially a way to tip the motivational scale during this process.

Check out the set of videos we are using this summer to motivate and fuel our journaling process:

http://otot.wikispaces.com/Writing+Setups

In summary, video can be powerful to draw attention, build background knowledge, and build motivation in reading and writing. There is so much more to be studied, researched, implemented, and written about regarding this topic. I look forward to engaging in the process.

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