Grade One Language Arts - Participating in shared and guided listening and speaking experiences

Not only is learning to read and write an essential at the grade one level, but having the ability to listen and speak is important as well. The website that I located that is connected to these two areas, for example when you click on the animals link it takes you to a site where there are several animals from dogs to fish and when you pull the curser over that specific animal it then makes a sound; the dog will bark, the cat will meow, etc. Also, when you go the link of songs and letters it displays the alphabet and when you pull the curser over the letter it sings a song, such as for "A" it sings angry alligator.

I would incorporate this website into my classroom by just simply listening to what it has to play, and play around with tazzle the tiger. I would make sure that they were listening very carefully to what all noises the animals make, and then once all the students returned to their desk I would have everyone share their favorite noise of the animal, and even discuss some noises animals make that were not on the website as well, this way they are thinking and broadening what they know already from the website by linking it to personal experiences. I would also have them access the coloring page and get them to print off their favorite picture to take back to their desk to color and reflect on what they learnt. I like how the pictures go through the alphabet and have a sentence to go with the picture. For example, for the letter "H" it says helping hand and then displays a picture of one person helping another.

I feel that this website would benefit my students speaking and listening skills in the way that by the site displaying the sounds and speaking of animals and the alphabet, students are able to recognize those sounds, and some students learn better by hearing rather than reading. So this website provides a variety of learning abilities to suite the students needs. By having "tazzle the tiger" it makes it a fun and accessible kids site and it makes it welcoming and friendly as well. Most students love animals, so why not incorporate that into their learning by connecting the alphabet with animals!