Reply to Sheree P. -- I like
your theory "Learn to read, then read to learn". As a special education
teacher, I see this obstacle in many of my students. They have not completely
learned to read. But yet, as junior high students they are forced to read
to learn. If they cannot read, then their ability to read to learn is affected.
I review reading skills with my students. I also ask them to read a certain
number of books each quarter. This provides them with practice. At this stage,
some students are not going to be able to pick up on all of those skills that
they have missed learning along the way. Therefore, not only do we practice
reading and learn the reading skills, we also work on finding alternatives
to help students work around their difficulties. I try to teach the students
to skim through the reading to pick out important parts. I show them how to
take notes on the reading. Writing down things in their own words to assist
them in understanding and remembering. I agree with your assessment of EnchantedLearning.com.
This site is not a place kids would enjoy exploring on their own. The fact
that it is so long (vertically) is very frustrating at times. This site could
use an organizational overhaul. But...It does contain some awesome resources
and activities for teachers to use in their classroom. It is geared more towards
teachers than towards students. I would suggest to any teacher using this
site to provide links to specific activities (as you did with your link) and
have a prepared list of links that students should visit. On the other hand,
butterflies.com seems to be a nice
student-friendly site to facilitate learning.
Reply to Janet -- Your analysis of your chosen web sites is an accurate
assessment. The OWL site provides clear, neat instructions. The IPL site can
be cluttered and often lead the reader away from the site. The lack of direction
on the IPL site is definitely a negative feature.
Reply to Tammy -- I like the way you approached this assignment. The icons
draw you attention to the main points (I like your opening graphic!). The
way that you made up your own checklist and provided it to your readers in
a checklist form is very helpful. It could easily be printed for users to
go to web sites and write their comments down as they go through the checklist.
Your analysis appears to be dead-on. The Geo-Mysteries is a much more user-friendly,
child-oriented site. It is very well organized. I agree that some sort of
progress map would be helpful.
