Group+4+-+Monday+Section

[|Our Prezi]
[|revised group pp.pptx]
 * Bullet summary for points 3 and 5 of chapter 6 (Samantha Marchan)**

Instructional Flexibility
Differences between students exist in their recognition, strategy, and affect.

Recognition
is understanding what's presented. Text-to-speech software can accomodate the blind or anyone who simply needs to hear a word read to them. If you're using Google Chrome, which can be downloaded [|here], you can use [|this site] for text-to-speech. Other examples of accomodating instruction to students with software is through magnifying text, which can be done with the small magifying glass at the bottom-right corner of a Internet Explorer browser, or seeing synonyms of a word, which can be done through Microsoft Word by highlighting a word and pressing shift-F7. [|Wikipedia] is an excellent example of a site with hyperlinks that lead to articles of additional information or almost anything any article may refer to.

Strategy
is responding to the assignment in a way to facilitate a deeper understanding of the material. The [|CAST website] puts it "While students are reading, they can stop periodically to apply different strategies to predict, question, clarify, summarize, visualize, make a personal connection to the story, or reflect on their progress as readers." This can be done through worksheets distributed by an attentive instructor, following the students' work, or by the prompts of a computer program. For example, the student may reach the end of a chapter in //To Kill a Mockingbird// and be prompted to answer a specific one of the questions on [|this page]. These responses could be graded or used just to gauge the student's understanding of the reading so their instruction can be adjusted.

Affective
is appropriate instruction, based on assessment of a student's particular skill level in a subject. Much like a software could prompt a student to answer questions about an e-text, it could gauge the student's understanding by his or her response and adjust the assignment according. Keeping student in the [|zone of proximal development]is extremely important in keeping the student both engaged and not overwhelmed.

The higher the demand for this kind of software, the greater the speed with which it will become easily accessible to all students and educators.

Affective networks are networks in the brain that enable us to engage with learning; networks specialized to evaluate patterns and impart emotional significance to them. What this means is that in order to help students learn, we must engage them where their brains are. Using background knowledge allows students to [|assimilate] new information into their understandings of the world.
 * Affective Networks**

Every [|curriculum] has barriers to some learners. Our current curriculums oftern do not have a "place" for students to express themselves through art, music, spacial reasoning, videos, or acting; to name a few creative outlets. For those students who do not express their ideas well on paper, the current curriculums simply label them as "stupid."
 * Curriculum Barriers**

[] __**Web-capable electronic graphic organizers**__ (see Figure 6.2) such as Inspiration and Kidspiration. [] __**Programs that support the translation of content from one medium to another**__ (e.g., text-to-speech and text-to-image) such as CAST eReader, Pix Reader, Pix Writer, and Intellitalk II. []
 * Adjustable software tools, digital content, and world wide web resources**
 * __Multimedia composition tools__** such as HyperStudio, Kid Pix, and PowerPoint.