Yearning

For a week we had a document camera in our classroom. One whole week! It was wonderful. Now it is time to start looking for a grant so that I can have one of my own.

I borrowed this one from our school district (we have pool of electronic equipment we can check out). One of the things we do in the first few weeks of first grade is 'read' wordless picture books. As many of my students are not yet readers, I want them to see how much they can read of a story just through pictures.

However, trying to do so just looking at a picture book seemed too challenging. If we wanted to really read the pictures I thought the students should be able to see them clearly. Hence the document camera.

I didn't get it well set up in our classroom since it was only temporary. But it was perfect for this use. In these pictures we are 'reading' the pictures of a non-fiction book. That was suggested by one of my amazing co-teachers and was a brilliant idea. Lots of first graders love non-fiction books but they don't really know how to go about reading them yet.

There is nothing like having a piece of equipment in your classroom to get the flood of ideas coming. There are so many ways we could use a document camera if we had one all the time. Off to grant hunt...