What would best help me as a teacher next semester? What would be most helpful and relevant to the learning opportunities for my students? What unit needed the most "help"? And that is when it hit me. I have been trying to figure out the best way to read "The Giver" next term. There are some recordings I have found, but most of them are boring or dull. Aka: My students would just sleep through the book! And that's not what I want...I am hoping that they will become vigorous readers through their interaction with texts in my class. I also considered having the students read. However, in most my classes at BYU, they suggest that we read the majority of the book with the students to help improve their reading. Struggling readers usually don't get better by listening to other struggling readers read.
Thus, for my project I would like to learn how to operate Librivox and submit my own reading of the novel. This would enable me to add characterization and personality to the reading without losing my own voice. Furthermore, it would also be interesting to experiment with the possibility of students reading. As was mentioned in the voicethread, it would be intriguing for students to do their own interpretive readings. Perhaps each student could read a few pages and together there'd be a recording of a couple chapters. I'm not sure. But as I explored this idea I recognized that it held a lot of potential :) I'm excited to start and excited for others to become involved. Tell me what you think if you have suggestions!
PS...my book is "The Giver".
Christina I think that's a great idea, but won't it take you hours to record yourself reading "The Giver"? For your own sanity I would suggest something less time consuming.
ReplyDeleteI agree that recording the whole book would of course take too much time. For your project, you could record a chapter perhaps, as an example of what your students might do. Cool idea!
ReplyDeletehaha...yes, I think I must have been overly exhausted when I wrote that! I was planning for this project to tinker around, push buttons, and google search how to work this new technology and then just record one chapter. The assignment would then be to have students record either a chapter of "The Giver" or perhaps their own version of it. Thanks for the comments!
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