Using Voicethread for Writing Ideas and for Peer Marking In the past week or so our literacy work has focused on a short sequence from the comic Spiderman #1. Our Superheroes topic is going well and in this post I explain how we have used Voicethread as a creation tool, a writing scaffold and as a way to do peer marking. We began with the sequence in the comic where Peter is attending a science fair at a local school and is bitten by spider that has been zapped by one of the radiation machines on show. To begin with we made some notes about the short sequence as a whole class, mainly key words, things that just jumped out from the images and from the facial expressions of Peter. The next step was to import the five panels from the comic you can see in the above image into Voicethread. The children have the opportunity to say their ideas aloud. After sharing literally hundreds of narrative ideas for the sequence, the children were put with a writing partner. As we were working in Google Docs I dipped into their work as they were busy writing.
About - Digital Library Articles › English/Lang Arts 4th Grade English from Ms. Naugle Description VoiceThread enabled my students to put their poems out in an audio format to be shared with others. Process/Assignment I have used The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown for years and had my students write poems in the format she presents in her book. Content and Substance Write a poem based on the pattern established in Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book. Organization of Knowledge Read The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown to the students. Product Focus Students and their shoulder partner will use their assigned laptop to write their final draft using Word. Challenges or setbacks Easiest: My students loved writing their poems. Hardest: The hardest part was putting the VoiceThread together. Tools As part of this lesson I used an IWB (interactive whiteboard), an LCD projector, and several websites. Tips Make a sample three or four page VoiceThread first. Variations I adapted this lesson for my math classes.
Five Card Flickr Smories - new stories for children, read by children Story Starters: Creative Writing Prompts for Kids If you’re looking to inspire your students’ writing and creativity, turn to these fun and exciting writing prompts. Perfect for overcoming writer’s block or even starting a brand-new short story in a different narrative, creative writing prompts can help students begin a new piece with confidence. Plus, these story starters can also encourage students to explore different genres while honing their writing skills. There are a lot of ways you can use writing prompts in your classroom. Try: Reading a book in a genre, then having students use a story starter in that same genre. Take inspiration from classics like Treasure Island and newer popular series like The Bad Guys to explore how to write thrilling adventure stories. You’re part of a pirate crew in search of a long-lost storied treasure trove. Get students excited about adventure stories with these great books: If you’re looking to inspire your students’ writing and creativity, turn to these fun and exciting writing prompts.
19 Word Cloud Resources, Tips, & Tools Posted by Shelly Terrell on Sunday, February 14th 2010 Part of the Cool Sites series Learning new vocabulary can be quite daunting for most students. Wordle Wordle is one of the best ways to engage learners if you know how to use it well. Alternatives Tech Tools & Pedagogy– Word Clouds- Marisa Constantinides’ post includes a comparison chart that lists the options for each of the following word cloud tools and shows you visual examples of each. A few more alternatives include: ABC ya! Resources Tips You can make phrases in Wordle by using the ~ to group words. Tagul Tips I use Tagul when I want to have each of the words in a cloud lead to a link with more information or to have them in a specific shape such as a heart, star, rectangle, or regular cloud. Two ways to customize links: By default, Tagul will have the clickable links lead to Google search results of each word. Challenge: Don’t have students memorize word lists, instead have students use one of these tools or tips.