Easi-Speak Giveaway! Find Out Who Won...Was it YOU?

 

Please join me in congratulating Rachel Evans Evers (let's see if 3 times is a charm!) who won the Easi Speak for her classroom!

Please check your email Rachel  (maybe even your spam folder) for directions in order to receive your prize!

This will be the third person Rafflecoptor has chosen for this contest, fingers crossed that Rachel gets this message so she can have this amazing tool for her classroom this year.

I had seen these little microphones all over the internet, so you can imagine my excitement when Learning Resources contacted me and asked me check one out AND gave me one to give away to my readers.  This little tool is amazing!  First, let me give you the specifics that make this such a kid-friendly classroom tool and then I will share all of the fun ways I used it in my classroom:

• Just one button to record.
• Stores 4 hours of audio.
• Charges via your computer's USB port (no batteries!)
• Easy

This is an amazing classroom tool with limitless abilities.  Like its namesake suggests, it is "easy" to use for both adults with limited techno ability AND for young children.  It is a great tool to encourage even your shyest speakers to talk and your most reluctant readers to read.  I love how it can store 4 hours worth of files separately for a teacher to listen to later or to use as a whole class demonstration.  I even plugged it right into my classroom's speaker system to turn it up really loud (although it is actually quite loud without doing that!). 

Here are some ideas of ways that I used it in my classroom:

• As tattling seemed to be getting out of control in my classroom, I set one day aside and told the children to record their tattles into the microphone.  Then, I strung all of their tattles together, turned the volume way up and listened.  It was very powerful, because they got to hear what I hear all day long and realized how silly some of it really was.  We also discussed how some of them were reports and reviewed tattles vs. reports.
• I had the children interview each other about their kindergarten year and put their sweet answers and voices into our end of year slideshow (priceless!).
• I had my apprehensive readers retell familiar stories into the microphone (like fairytales, Pete the Cat, etc.).
• I had my higher readers practice fluency by reading their familiar reads into the microphone.  It is really powerful for them to hear the difference between reading like talking vs. reading like a robot.
• Students can read the room while recording
• Students can also read their writing into the microphone.
• Have students record themselves reading the list of sight words and have another student listen to see if they got them all right.  Time how fast they did it.
• My favorite?  Having the children sing songs that we have learned OR  songs that they have made up!

Wouldn't you like to add this bit of technology to your classroom??  If you don't win this, at least make sure you are following my blog because I have a list of more giveaways like this coming up this summer with more prizes for you to win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway Be sure to follow Mrs. Miner's Kindergarten Monkey Business or LIKE it on Facebook (both available in left sidebar) so you never miss another FREEBIE or informative article.