Robin Talkowski’s Blog

Most educators would list lack of sufficient time as one of the big teaching frustrations. Consequently, all instruction and support activities must be directly connected to the curriculum and standards of performance.  Reading instruction has four major foci:  decoding, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  At the middle school level, the decoding aspect of reading often emphasizes morphology, i.e. the smallest unit of language that carries meaning such as prefixes, suffixes, and root words.  This approach to decoding blends into vocabulary expansion.

When evaluating what technology resources to use with my instruction, I look at what purpose technology can serve.  1.  Does it aid or enhance the actual learning itself?  Does it reinforce things learned?  Or 3.  Does it showcase student’s demonstrated learning?  Many technology applications serve more than one purpose.  Also, as a teacher, I know that our minds like new things, unique things, or exciting things.  Consequently, I look for at least 5 different ways that I can use technology to accomplish the same purpose.  For example, I know how excited my students have been to play the “Mouse” hang man game on Spelling City, but if that is the only reinforcing activity I do for a week, they will soon tell me how boring it is!  The task, then, is to use sufficient resources to keep the students interested and learning; and yet not overwhelm the students and teachers with too many options.

Since the technological resources vary for each instructional area, I will focus on each reading instructional area and some of the resources used one at a time.  The resources cited should in no way be considered inclusive.  They are simply ones that I have used and found effective.  Part 3 will focus on Decoding and Vocabulary instruction.