Monday, January 7, 2013

Tracking with LED Car Rings

language arts, reading strategies
FINALLY! Something that makes my kids look at what they are reading! I don't know about you, but my students are experts at fake reading...you know, they memorize the words  and 'read.' When I tell them to point as they read, they (okay half of them) randomly point to words with a smirk on their cute little faces. My personal favorite is when they are 'reading' the words from their decodables,  but their eyeballs are glued on me (side note: I started to tape sight words on my clothes; I figured if they're going to stare at me while they read, they might as well see real words written on me).
20 LED Car Shaped Laser Finger Beam Flash Lights

Back to the LED car rings! I LOVE THEM and so do my students! They were excited to use the 'highlighters' to highlight the words as they read (I told them they were just like Wyatt, from SuperWhy who uses a highlighter to read words). They actually even placed the car rings on the pointer finger (and not the middle finger - that some of darlings not knowingly use - gotta love kindergarten!) I dim the lights so the ring lights are focused on their words. They were able to read for 7 minutes all by themselves AND (get this), they actually pulled out their reading box to read some more! The ring lights are super cheap too (you can get a set of 20 for less them 10 bucks).