Daina Putnam

My 5th grade scaffolded Language Arts class has been listening and reading "The Lightning Thief". We are approximately 1/2 of the way through the novel. I have asked my students to give a brief summary of what has happened in the book so far. The attached MobileStudio sound file is from a very quiet ELL student. While the summary is too "brief", the results reflect what the iPods and the iRead projects have produced: a more fluent, confident 5th grade student.

At the beginning of the year, this group of 5th graders did not like reading at all. The reason, simply put, it was a very hard, painful, and long process. Decoding, making sense of what they were reading took too long. Comprehension was lost along the way. Books that were considered at their reading level were not necessarily appropriate for a 5th grader to be seen reading. Social stigmas are attached to their books.

What this program has done is this: my students now rush in to find out which new book they will be reading. I have introduced 5th grade level books so they are able to "read" the books that their peers are enjoying. Their obvious enjoyment of reading is evident; their comprehension is increasing; and, more importantly, their motivation to do their best has improved. We are able to use the expertise of some students who, prior to this program, have never been able to share anything with their classmates. They now have a voice.

Since I have really been focusing on student motivation in my Scaffolded Language Arts 5th grade class, I have once again focused on fluency and summarization skills. Embedded in this project is a thread of literary analysis and inference. The group I am working with are struggling readers. Due to their high frustration levels when it comes to reading, I have been exposing them to grade level pieces of literature that they are not able to read on their own for a variety of reasons which include: low comprehension skills, lack of grade level vocabulary, lack of decoding skills, lack of desire due to difficulty in reading, extremely slow reading speed (which leads to an increased time period in which it takes them to finish the book leading to lack of comprehension), etc.

Using the iPods, I have been able to introduce Dragon Rider, Eragon, Tale of Despereaux, and, most recently, The Lightning Thief. Students have the ability to not only listen to the text, but follow along in a book as well. This is a crucial piece to the comprehension process. However, the motivation that the iPods have created among this group of struggling readers is not able to be measured.

My project, this time around, is using Mobile Studio. Students are re-telling in their own words what has happened in the book so far. The students are all at different places in the novel (depending on their listening habits). For some, due to their low comprehension skills, this is a difficult task as they frequently miss the inferences that the author expects the readers to pick up on. That is a 5th grade skill that we are focusing on this year - a skill that eludes this group. While we are getting better, our comprehension is increasing, and the desire to "read" the next book is becoming contagious, we have a long way to go.

The students were assigned books that were at their reading level (this is a scaffolded Language Arts class of 5th graders). Students read their book and drew 8 illustrations of the key events of the book they read. I used my camera to take pictures of the illustrations and transferred them to the iPods (via iPhoto). I then assigned the 8 illustrations to a different student who was given the task of inferring what was happening in the story based on the illustrations. Students, using Reel Director, first transferred the illustrations they were assigned into Reel Director. They had to edit the images so the time was longer than the 4 second default. We ended up using 2 copies of the pictures with a time of 6-8 seconds for each image. Students then recorded their inferences. And re-recorded, and re-recorded until they could (somewhat) fluidly describe what was happening in the picture. We used a sentence starter: From this picture I can infer... to give them a base to start from with their recordings. After reviewing their recordings, students then rendered their "movies".

After completing their inferences, the students then actually read the book. After reading the book, they went back and listened to their recorded inferences on the iPod and compared their inferences with what actually happened in the book. Students then physically wrote about their differences in their inferences. I chose to incorporate writing skills along with their reading and fluency. They were to then go back and read their written reflection.

In looking back, the drawings that were more complete, provided a better basis for the student's inferences. Students discovered that their inferences were not completely accurate (some were closer than others). They also discovered that, when listening to their recorded voices, they needed to work on their oral fluency. Another "ah ha" moment for these struggling readers.

These students really struggle with fluency and reading speed and, because of these 2 huge issues with their reading, really don't like reading. Having the hook of working on the iPod has totally increased their excitement for Language Arts in general, and reading specifically. By having them go back and re-read their reflection, they were being held accountable for their own learning.

With my Scaffold Language Arts 5th grade class, I assigned books at my students' independent reading level. The students were to read the assigned book. Once they finished, they created 8 illustrations that depicted the 8 important events of the book/story.

I took pictures of the 8 illustrations and transfered them into iPhoto so I could load them onto the iPods (I created individual student folders in order to keep them separate and only loaded 3-4 students' illustrations per iPod).

Using Reel Director, I then assigned a different student to look at the illustrations and, using the pictures, asked them to infer what was happening in the book. We used the sentence starter: From the picture, I can infer.... The students copied the illustrations/photos into Reel Director and recorded their inferences. They focused on their sentence fluency and re-recorded when they were not happy with their inference/fluency.

After rendering their "movie/inferences", they are now reading the book that their fellow student read. From their reading, they will monitor their inferences by writing their own summary of the story and compare their initial inferences from the photos with their actual reading.

They will then go back and add to their Reel Director file/movie and correct their inferences based on their actual reading of the book.