EDLD+5364+Week+Three+Update

The CAST website was included in both this week's and last week's readings. There are several wonderful tools located there and they will be a good resource for me in the future. As part of the assigned work, I created an electronic book on the CAST Book Builder site. I am going to be teaching about sound and vibrations next week, so I chose those as the subject for my book. There is a component in the Book Builder that lets the author create 'coaches' that will explain content or ask questions of the reader to check for understanding. Video and Audio clips can also be added to each page to create a rich, multimedia presentation. I included many sounds and realistic pictures to make my book fit my lesson plan. I used two 'coaches' to ask about the content and get my students thinking about sounds and why we hear them. It took me about five hours to finish my eleven page book, but I feel that I successfully addressed all three principals of the Universal Design for Learning.The built-in 'coaches' made it easy for me to direct the focus of my book to the concepts I was trying to include. I can't wait to share this book with my students next week. I plan to project it onto my interactive white board and use my SmartBoard software to make the lesson even more interactive. I'm sure that I will be utilizing this program regularly. Using electronic books created with the Book Builder will allow me to customize the content and differentiate the instruction for every learner in my classroom. My book is called [|//Sounds Around Us//]. I hope that you enjoy it.

Another link available on the CAST website is the Universal Design for Learning Lesson Builder. I used this program to create an entire lesson using the UDL principals to address the Recognition, Strategic and Affective Networks. I included the first principal, the Recognition Network through a questioning session at the begining of the lesson. The Strategic Network will be included when the students create a hands-on model and discover how vibrations travel. The last Network, the Affective, will be addressed through the final assessment when the students use the Kid Pix program to demonstrate what they have learned. They will be determining the value what they observed and creating a product to share their new knowledge. I incorporated my new electronic book as part of the lesson, as well as included a hands-on component where the students will construct a model eardrum to discover how vibrations work with our ears. The final part of my lesson will include an assessment where the students will go to the computer lab and create simple diagrams and sentences to demonstrate what they have learned from the lesson. This lesson can be found as an attachment on our group [|EDLD 5364] Google site. It's been a time-consuming, but rewarding week.