Reading Project--Day Nine

Once again, I'm blogging late about this.

On Friday, we made good progress in all of the classes.

In the first class, all of the students have printed a rough draft. Most of the students received that draft back with teacher recommendations and made adjustments. In the second class, everyone is on target and has finished making teacher recommended adjustments and is ready to record. On Monday (today) students will begin recording. At the very beginning of class, everyone will practice reading aloud together (even though they are reading different things) as a warm-up. Then, then will be recorded reading one at a time or with a partner. Those with partner will sit together in front of the class, and transition to one another during the report, but everyone has to read his or her report alone.

In the third class, the last period of the day, we are a bit further behind. However, it is not that far behind considering how much class time has been missed over the last two weeks. By the end of class, everyone had printed a first draft. Next class, they will get them back with comments and will have to finish the final copy by the end of class. We will begin recording on Tuesday.

The Reading teacher and I have been discussing how this project has dragged. A few things came to mind. One, the Reading teacher seems to have decided to not do any more long term projects in the middle of January. She's not against long term projects, she just doesn't want them to be made longer by snow days and snow delays. Also, we talked about having the kids have something to read that did not need to be modified.

After doing some searching, we both decided that using news transcripts would not work for this project because they include too many people talking (which does not translate well into the teleprompter) and they include too many references to videos and images. I did a little more thinking and searching, and found a site with teen monologues. They are a great length, and would shorten the process of this project significantly. Students would be able to choose a reading quickly because they will not have to find one. Also, they will not have to modify it, which is something they did not necessarily understand how to do (many of them do not make a regular habit of watching news, and therefore don't know what types of things reporters say to transition or end a report). I think using the monologues would take a lot of pressure off of the students, and remove a lot of stress from the teacher.

Managing Resources

So I've finally decided to copy all of the resources from my other wiki and create a new wiki that will be organized in similar fashion.

My first wiki was set up as a private space for my teachers to have access to resources while being free to collaborate, experiment, and discuss without feeling they were being watched. That way, they will be able to more freely brainstorm and more accurately discuss what has and has not worked wand why. It's important for us to be able to fail so we can learn from it, after all. However, that put the depository of all of the resources I have found behind a password. A few CFF colleagues asked for access, so reposting everything in a public spot seemed to be the best solution. My teachers still have a private workspace, and I can share the resources I'm gathering. I haven't been able to use even a small fraction of these resources yet, and I haven't even been able to fully evaluate a significant chunk. But there's a lot here that can probably meet the needs of a variety of people.