Standard+2

=Standard 2 - Teachers know how children grow.=

Evidence: Word Family Fun


This activity demonstrates my ability to take my conceptual knowledge of how children learn and grow and develop a multimedia activity that helps all children move further along on their developmental paths. What I learned by developing this activity is that through the use of some very basic technology (i.e. PowerPoint) I can develop a multimedia activity that is infinitely and easily expandable. Once the instructionally sound framework of the project is developed, it can be modified and expanded quite easily, which allows me to more readily meet the needs of all my students.
 * Rationale:** Word Family Fun is a multimedia activity I created for my kindergarten students as part of my Teaching and Learning with Multimedia course. I developed it to provide my students with an enjoyable, motivational way to explore word families. My students enjoyed using this activity and it motivated them to brainstorm other word family words that could be added to the activity.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND DISPOSITIONS
====2.K.1 The teacher understands how learning occurs -- how students construct knowledge, acquire skills, and develop habits of mind – and how to use instructional strategies that promote student learning for a wide range of student abilities.====

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Learning to recognize patterns in words is an important part of reading in kindergarten. These patterns are both visual and auditory. In my experience, some children rely more on auditory information when learning about word families, while other children rely more on visual information. Both types of information are important to learning about word families and I kept that in mind as I designed this activity. Word Family Fun gives children exposure to both auditory and visual information as they explore these word families===== ====2.S.2 The teacher stimulates student reflection on prior knowledge and links new ideas to already familiar ideas, making connections to students’ experiences, providing opportunities for active engagement, manipulation, and testing of ideas and material, and encouraging students to assume responsibility for shaping their learning tasks.====

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Word Family Fun was designed to give students an introduction to word families with an activity that is interactive and multi-dimensional. It links pictures, print and spoken words together, as well as emphasizing the visual and auditory patterns within each word family. Because students can read and/or listen to the words being spoken, it also allows students with different levels of knowledge to access the content in different ways, and link their new learning to something they already know.===== ====2.D.1 The teacher appreciates individual variation at each developmental level and shows respect for the diverse talents of all learners, and is committed to help them develop self-confidence and competence.====

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Word Family Fun was designed to give all students access to the content through the use of pictures, print and sound. Students who are noticing print can try reading the words before they listen to the word being spoken and use the spoken word feature to confirm that they read the word correctly. Students who are not consistently noticing print can use the spoken word feature to associate the spoken words with the pictures and/or the print. Regardless of a student’s way of learning, all students can find success with this activity, which helps them develop their self-confidence and sense of competence.=====