hsibley

My fourth grade High Point students are continuing to make inferences on the ipod using Voice Memo. After we made inferences with this wordless book, I had the students summarize the story. I had originally planned to use ReelDirector, but after working with Sonic Pics, I took Tom's suggestion and used Sonic Pics.

My 4th and 5th grade High Point students are working on their first extensive WRITE Institute writing project, autobiographical incident. The literature for this genre is When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant. I wanted my students to be able to summarize the story. I used pictures from the story and I thought that the students would need the sentence stems to help them summarize. I wanted them to practice dialogue since this is an important element in the writing rubric and I wanted them to see how dialogue can enhance the story. I used the audio recorder which really made it easy for the students to replace the audio on one slide if the student wanted to redo a section of the summary. On our next keynote, I think that I will provide the sentence stems only for my newcomers and see how they do. I have attached my template as well as one student keynote. (Abraham)

My 4th and 5th grade High Point students are using the book The Tortoise and the Jackrabbit as the literature piece for the WRITE Institute compare/contrast essay. They are also working on summarizing as a reading comprehension strategy. They need the visual cues as scaffolding for the vocabulary. I used used photo booth and keynote to provide those visual cues. They summarized the story using the ipod touch. As we listened to their summarization we checked to see which of the target vocabulary they used to summarize. 

This was a very motivational project for my fourth and fifth grade High Point students. We have been discussing the strategy of summarizing and utilizing the stratey in listening, speaking, reading and writing. As a group, we brainstormed the important features of the text. I reminded them that they needed to state the problem in the beginning and the solution at the end. The artwork provided crucial scaffolding for the summaries. They have asked if they can do this again with other stories.

My 4th and 5th grade High Point students are working on a WRITE Institute writing unit. The genre is short story. In making the reading/writing connection with Ferdinand we focused on several aspects of comprehension. There were specific elements that the students needed to include in the retell of the story, including a well developed protagonist, description using sensory details and dialogue that developed the character.  These High Point students are all CELDT 1 and 2, so I provided stems to assist them in the retell. After the Reading/Writing Connection students will be writing their own short stories. This was an extremely motivational project for my students. Each of them wanted to do his or her best. Whenever they finished their work, I would see them rereading the story, examining the writing rubric and practicing the retell. We listened to their retells together and examined strengths and growth areas. They were very anxious to share their retells with other students and teachers.