July

Audio in the Classroom: Meeting Read Aloud Accommodations

Posted In: For Educators, Recording, Uncategorized by christinabutler

Many students with reading disabilities benefit from written material being read aloud. I have already talked about the advantages of short stories and novels being listened to individually or as a class on CD or tape. Now we move on to a much easier task of having shorter tests and quizzes recorded on CD.

To review, when a students has a reading disability, the student should not suffer academically due to this disability. Having a test played from a CD increases test validity and decreases stress on everyone’s part. The CD can be easily paused when someone asks for more time on answering a question.

This CD can be used in many instances. The first is the Exceptional Education teacher that must meet accommodations for students with disabilities. The teacher prepares the CD ahead of time and then simply presses “play” while the students follow along with the paper copy on their desks. This allows teachers to have a “clean read,” instead of worrying about their inflection during the reading of certain answers. If you are using a CD, there is no way that a cough can turn into a “cue” for a correct answer!

Another way to use these CDs is in a Regular Education classroom. Many times, the teacher does not have the staff available to take a student out of the classroom to read the test. A student can use a CD player and headphones to complete the test, while the teacher meets this legal accommodation. Even better would be to play the CD for the whole class. Every classroom contains students that may struggle with reading. Think of students with test anxiety. Having the test read aloud may help a student choose answers more carefully and accurately.

The last way to use a CD like this is in the case of an absence. Teachers hate to be absent and worry if their substitute is carrying out classroom duties appropriately. If the sub is able to walk in, press “play,” and monitor student behavior, the test will have a better chance of being fair and accurate. Also, in the case of a student absence, the student can use the CD player and headphones to complete the test, without having to pull more staff members to read the test individually.

As you can see, read aloud test and quizzes are much easier when recorded to CD. Use software to record these at home or find a local recording studio that can complete a set of CDs for you for the school semester or year.

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July

7

Audio in the Classroom: Making Transitions Easier with Music Cues

Posted In: For Educators, Uncategorized by christinabutler

In a previous post, I discussed using recorded “read alouds” in the classroom to improve students’ reading comprehension. In today’s post, I’d like to share another use for audio in the classroom. This method will make your life MUCH easier and save your energy also! Think of all of the transitions that you use in your classroom on a daily basis. Your students come in the room and start working on seat work quietly. You then give instructions and they move to a different activity, maybe centers or group work. Then you need to get their attention to come back to their seats. This sounds good on paper, but it requires a lot of attention-getting by way of the teacher talking, clapping, hollerin’, etc. Imagine having students work through transitions with only the push of a button.

Musical cues are truly the way to go in a classroom. Students enter the room to a song that promotes working and calmness. As you introduce the lesson and give instructions, students hear upbeat music as they travel to their destination. As students hear another cue, upbeat but different than the first, they know to travel to the next center. Anytime they hear this cue, they travel to the next center. When students hear the next cue of a quieter song, they return to their seats. Each cue can be a different track on a CD. Most CD players now come with remote controls, so you can change to another song from anywhere in your classroom

Other than saving your voice and energy, the best part about musical cues is that you can be creative with your music choices. One of your cues could have tribal drum beats to get students eager for the upcoming unit on Africa. Your cues can sound like popular music that they are listening to currently. It only takes a few minutes to explain the cues to students and they will work for the whole year!

How do you go about making a cue CD? GarageBand is a popular music production software that comes pre-loaded on Apple computers. It is very easy to use and comes with lots of instrument loops and beats. For Windows users, Sony’s Acid Music Studio is a comparable program. Since there are legal issues with using commercial music, you can also contact local studios and have a custom CD made using royalty-free samplers. There are royalty-free music sites on the internet which offer free downloads that you can also try, but be careful as you want to be sure they are legit. Butler Productions offers a selection of royalty free music available for purchase and instant download. They also have produced a CD of transition music for the classroom.

I hope that you will try a musical cue CD in your classroom. After all, if it doesn’t work, you can go back to hollerin’!

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July

1

Acoustic Treatment in the Classroom

Posted In: For Educators, Uncategorized by christinabutler

Are recording studios the only place for acoustic treatments?

Yes.

No, really. If the answer was “yes,” this would be a very short post! One place that benefits from acoustic treatments, but is often overlooked, is a classroom. Many classrooms have tile floors and hard surface walls (concrete block, etc.). Classrooms have desks, with large flat hard tops, and podiums, with more large flat hard tops. All of these surfaces are reflective. More reflective surfaces magnify extraneous noise and make intended speech less distinguishable. The presence of sound absorptive materials helps to alleviate these issues.

I personally became aware of the need for treatments in my room when I spoke from my podium one day… and my voice boomed back at me. My voice came back to my face, NOT to my students’ faces (much less their ears)! If you think about all of the lecturing and dropping of books on the floor, that’s a lots of noise to bounce around in a hard walled, flat surface filled room. More than this, imagine how distracting these noises are to students, especially students with exceptionalities. That sound my pen made when it hit the tile floor, resonates and is magnified in the classroom. Some may not consciously notice it, but it may greatly interfere with some students’ learning environments.

While teachers can spruce up their rooms with table cloths, thick curtains, and rugs, these decorative items also help absorb the sound that’s bouncing around the room (and your students’ heads). In many rooms, however, this is not enough. In larger rooms, carpeting the entire room and adding treatments over bulletin boards to absorb sound, would help greatly. The larger/thicker the absorptive material becomes, the more potential it has to deal with lower frequencies (while still helping out with higher ones). Thick padded chairs work nicely for this. Cylindrical “broadband” treatments (i.e. absorbing frequencies from low to high) for corners in addition decorative absorptive wall panels are also commercially available from companies like Auralex and Sonex, but there are great, inexpensive do-it-yourself options as well (just Google “DIY Acoustic Treatment”).

Imagine having a room that is filled with students learning and collaborating, instead of just booming noise. Imagine if these treatments were used in larger areas of the school building, the cafeterias and the gyms. Would it be easier to hear during awards ceremonies? Would lunch be easier to digest when you don’t have a headache?

Yes.

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June

24

Audio in the Classroom: Improving Reading Comprehension with Recorded “Read-Alouds”

Posted In: For Educators, Uncategorized by christinabutler

No matter what classroom you walk into, there will be students who struggle with reading comprehension. In this post, I’ll share ways to use audio to measure comprehension more accurately.

First we must tackle the big question: “If the student is always read to, how will he learn to read on his own?” The answer is easy. “Learning to read” and “comprehension” are two different things. When a student learns to read, the student identifies letters, then letter sounds, and finally strings them together to make words. Eventually, the student uses memorization to read sight words and uses pronunciation rules to read complex words. Reading comprehension, however, is a different skill. Obviously, a student needs to comprehend, or show a basic understanding, of the topic presented.

A huge majority of students in today’s classrooms are auditory learners. This is my first reason for using audio in the classroom. My second reason is that students that struggle with reading do NOT need that hindering their acquisition of a topic. If a student needs to read a passage on the effects of global warming and answer questions about the topic, why should a reading deficit keep this student from answering questions about a scientific topic? A student should be able to answer questions, whether or not he gets tripped up on complicated words.

Read Alouds in the English/Language Arts Classroom

The first place that most teachers would use audio for read alouds is in the English/Language Arts classroom. Many Literature textbooks come packaged with tapes or CDs of the poems and short stories included in the book. These are valuable tools in the classroom. Having students read aloud has always been used to keep students on track, but has since served to embarrass many students and lose other students who can’t hear well. Playing the CDs in class allows for all students to be able to relax and follow along.

Many English/Language Arts classrooms also complete novel studies during the school year. CDs are also very beneficial in this case, especially if each chapter is a separate track. This allows teachers to pick up at the right place, and end the time a teacher spends rewinding to find the right place.

My favorite way to use read alouds in the classroom is with short stories in combination with quizzes. Students turn to the correct page and I hit “play” on the CD player. Students hear a very engaging voice begin reading through the short story. After a few paragraphs, a chime plays and the voice gives a short summary of what has just happened. The voice then prompts the students to look at the quiz on their desks. The voice then reads the first question, re-reads it, and waits for students to answer on their papers. A chime plays again, and students return to their place in the short story. This continues through the short story, while students complete a 10 question quiz. (Here are some read-alouds that I use in my classroom.)

In my experience, using this type of audio helps for many reasons. First, the students are listening to an engaging voice. Second, the short musical cues prompt students to pick up their pencils and answer the questions. Third, ample time was given for all students to answer. Finally, (my favorite reason), students did not have to remember 6 pages of text for 45 minutes (and possibly through a lunch break) before answering questions. This way, if a student did not understand what has just happened, the summary given was immediate. No students were confused through the whole story.

This type of quiz can be given to check for understanding of setting, characters, plot, or climax. It can also be used as a fun foreshadowing activity, where the CD explains what just happened and the student must answer what he thinks will happen next. Everyone loves a quiz with no right or wrong answers!

Furthermore, It goes without saying that using a recording in the classroom is ideal for when the teacher is out and a substitute is in charge. This allows the teacher to have control over what is covered during class, while the substitute can walk around and monitor behavior.

See my related post on Acoustic Treatment in the Classroom.

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