Story Retelling     

I had so much fun working with two ELL students yesterday retelling the story of the "Three Little Pigs." Taking a classic and restructuring it to understand author's purpose and perspective is a very engaging activity for students, but we bumped it up a bit because we recorded their voices once they finished their stories. The students worked in pairs: one narrator and one doing dialogue. They were given the artist license to change the setting and plot to a degree, but had to retell the story through the eyes of the wolf or any one of the three pigs. What fun! Now before you think this is just for little kids, our students were between 13-16, mostly guys and were totally into it. A traditional lesson on author's purpose and/or perspective could have included many examples, but get the students engaged on a personal level raises their level of awareness. This "tuesdays" is an encouragement to reconsider audio recording with your students. It's personal, powerful, FREE and effective.

          
    

Depending on your district, a good audio recorder is not always available on the standard computer and when the students go home, they don't always have an audio program.  I recommend using Audacity.  This powerful FREE interface gives teachers the ability to record their students' voices and even add copyright free music.  On the Windows side, there was really no program that could compete with Garage Band's sound bites and loops that come FREE on a Mac.  Using Audacity and importing sound loops is the closest we could get on the Windows side.  Audacity is a powerful tool that can be downloaded to your PC and will continue to help teacher and students record speeches, readings, ideas and more. I have had the pleasure of showing teachers and students this powerful tool for years and get very excited when they go much deeper than I can. Audacity can be used at the most simple level while affording the most advanced user plenty of options.

Please consider using audio more in your classroom or even personally. I can't tell you how many times I am grateful that I recorded my grandbaby's voice in different stages of her young life. In the classroom, students do not like the sound of their voice the first time they hear it. Don't give up. Once they hear it enough times, they get used to it. One of my favorite lessons we did with students was a video essay. The students wrote an essay on the theme, "I Believe." They did peer reviews and got final approval from the teacher before they got to record their voice. After they read their essay into Garage Band, they gathered pictures that helped tell the story and then added their recorded voice to the picture show to create a video essay. The written word came alive as they expressed themselves passionately. To hear their essay and share it had a much more powerful impact than just handing in a paper. Audio recording also makes the perfect "data collection" for fluency. By the end of the year, your students will be reading "shorter" also.

"Words are the voice of the heart."

Confucius

This serial plug headset we used yesterday was the most powerful recorder I ever used to my great surprise.  

ipadio   

LiveBinders 

Doceri 

NASA's Image Gallery 

Popplet 

Zoey's Room
Finance in the Classroom
Fotopedia 

The Common Good Forecaster  

Google Earth 

UJAM 

Symbaloo.edu 

Google Science Fair 

Stossel in the Classroom
Word Sift 

Lee Kolbert