Hello, hello??

Yesterday, I had some fun in Home Depot.  While Mr. Gumby and the Gumby boys were finding a new toilet for our bathroom, I was happily amusing myself in the plumbing section.  I rooted through several bins and boxes of PVC pipe parts and found what I needed to make a couple of "phones" for my classroom.  I'm not much of a crafter (or craftsman, for that matter), so I needed to go the easiest route possible.  I didn't want to saw PVC into sections (that's way too much work) so I opted for the "put-together-already-cut-pieces" plan.  With a little twisting, turning and connecting ...voila!  I had a "phone"! 

Of course, I had to try out my new "phone" right there at Home Depot.  Younger Son came walking down the aisle as I was talking to myself on my new "phone".  He grinned, rolled his eyes and then jogged off to tell his older brother that Mom was talking to herself again.  (My family never quite knows what to expect from me.)  In a few moments, Mr. Gumby and both Gumby boys came around the end of the aisle pretending to talk to themselves on make believe phones.  I'm telling you I live with a bunch of jokers!  I proceeded to explain to the three goofballs that I had a very good educational reason for talking to myself with  1 1/2 inch PVC pipe. 

These devices are called whisper phones, phonics phones or toobaloos. They can be homemade (like mine) with PVC pipe or purchased from teacher stores.  The ones I've seen at teacher stores and websites are called Toobaloos.   Toobaloos come in fancy colors and shiny metallic finishes.  According to the Meyer-Johnson website, they are "an interactive learning tool ideal for students to improve reading fluency and comprehension, phonics, articulation and voice. The Toobaloo is a simple, break-resistant device that magnifies voices so students hear themselves loud and clear as they softly practice their reading rate, phrasing and speech."  The phones are used by special education teachers and speech and language pathologists. 

The devices are also wonderful tools to use with English Language Learners!  I made myself two phones and am going to try them out with a couple of my students in the new year.  If they're successful, I plan to make myself a few more.  I don't need fancy colors and my homemade PVC pipe phones are dishwasher safe as well.

I found several articles on whisper phones. I'm including the articles here in case you would like to read them, too.

Open Websites from the University of Texas Department of Education

http://ows.edb.utexas.edu/site/teaching-above-beyond/toobaloo

The CANDL Foundation 

http://candlfoundation.com/pages/p_how_it_works.php

(The CANDL Foundation folks will send you 6 free phonics phones, if you send a request signed by your school's principal.)

Honeybee Listening

http://fastlizard.com/retired/honeybeelistening/pvc_phone.htm

Whisper Phone  (The Solo from this company has a harness that fits over a child's head to hold the phone in place.)

http://www.whisperphone.com/index.php/shop

Make Your Own Whisper Phones

(The author of this blog says it costs her 50 cents per phone when she makes her own.)

http://www.trcabc.com/resources/kellyscorner/make-your-own-whisper-phones/

         

Are You Listening?

In our ESL classes, we work on reading, writing, speaking and listening.  I know I plan a lot of instruction for my students covering the first three areas, but I need to increase the opportunities I provide for students to become better listeners.  I found an excellent article from Larry Ferlazzo at Education Week Teacher.  The article, "Response: Several Ways To Help Students Become Better Listeners" has some ideas I want to present to my students' classroom teachers AND some other ideas I am going to implement in my classroom.

We are fortunate to have many good teachers in our school, but I need to remember to gently remind some about providing verbal and written instructions for our English Language Learners.  In Ferlazzo's article he mentions,

Verbal/Written Instructions & Modeling
A major mistake many of us make is not providing verbal instructions before an activity. Extensive research emphasizes the importance of providing verbal and written instructions to English Language Learners, and this classroom practice works well for all learners. This will not only reduce the number of repetitive student questions, but it is also far easier for a teacher to point to the board in response to that inevitable repeated question, "What are we supposed to do?"

Teacher modeling is also an important instructional strategy that is often shortchanged in the classroom. After you give instructions, teachers actually demonstrating them can go a long way towards students understanding of what they are supposed to do. In addition, researchers have found that modeling has a major impact on increasing student self-confidence that they can replicate the task. Robert Marzano also recommends teacher modeling as a way to "deepen" student comprehension.

One of his readers, Heather Wolpert-Gawron, suggested an idea for listening practice.  She said,

If you're looking for a cool listening lesson, however, visual note-taking is a great activity to build up those listening muscles. Read them a passage, excerpt, etc...then time them as they sketch every detail they recall. When time is up, slowly remind them of the itemized list of details they may or may not have heard. If they sketched it, they get points. The goal is to get the most points, and the teacher decides what details the students should have absorbed with only one reading.

I think I might try this and see if it makes a difference with my students!