Comments for Teachers #2

The second teacher whose blog I commented on was William Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain blogs often, and requires students to write blogs in his classroom. I was a assigned children's blogs to comment on from his class, and he has commented on one of my blog posts before, so I felt more comfortable commenting on his blog than I would have a complete stranger. The first post I commented on was a post where he was showing the functions of a website called VozMe. This website allows you to select a text, copy it into the website, and the text you selected will be read out loud. At first I thought maybe it was just for blind students, so I asked Mr. Chamberlain how he incorporates VozMe into his classroom. He told me he gets uses it so he can have something read out loud to his classroom all at once. Like instructions to a project or something. He informed me that listening and reading uses two different parts of the brain. I think this is wonderful because students who are on different reading levels can hear the same instructions. I was a good reader in grade school, and I can remember constantly getting annoyed with other students when we read things out loud, because the other reader was so much slower than me. VozMe would help students like me, as well as all the other students work the part of their brain that listens. I like the thought of using VozMe in my class very much, and it is free, so why not use it?


The second post I commented on was called I got Your PD Right Here! In it Mr. Chamberlain is talking about how he was assigned to a math class for team teaching. I hadn't heard of team teaching before this and I found it very interesting. I asked him what exactly the concept of it was, and am waiting to hear back from him. But to assign teachers to team teaching is very clever because it re-vamps the teachers teaching skills and allows them to begin learning inside the classroom as Mr. Chamberlain pointed out. I think that is so exciting that after years of teaching, Mr. Chamberlain is put back into the students placde again. He remembers now what it feels like to learn in the classroom, as well as teach the subject of math, which is very difficult! Props to Mr. Chamberlain!
http://attheteachersdesk.blogspot.com/