iPod Visualizations

So using technology in the classroom is definitely one of the biggest perks of my job.  I love finding different and interesting ways to integrate iPods into reading and math other than just using games and apps.  A few weeks ago my class was learning about the reading strategy of visualization.  We did a lot of different activities to allow the student to practice visualizing text they heard, but one way to make this strategy more of a real life topic was by having the students visualize sounds they hear in every day life and illustrate what they see.  Here's what we did:

I downloaded 6-7 different sound effects of things that are in our everyday life.  Some examples include thunder, lawn mower, ambulance.  There are a lot of websites that offer free mp3 downloads of different sound effects.  I downloaded them onto our iPods and named them sound 1, sound 2, etc.  After discussing what good readers do when they visualize I explained our very exciting activity.  We listened to one sound effect at a time and after listening to each we illustrated what we visualized.  When we were done, we shared and compared our visuals and discussed how the main idea was the same but the details were different and meaningful to our lives.

We had a lot of fun doing this and it really made visualizing come alive for the students.  Below are some pictures I took of my kids completing the activity as well as the recording sheet I used to allow them to draw their visualizations.  Let me know what you think!

Here's the recording sheet! (Click on to download!)
Have a great week blogland!