Process Drama (17)

After reading the articles for this week, I found that process drama is my new favorite task to try and incorporate in the classroom. I thought that all of the ideas were really beneficial to all topics of an English classroom. I loved the vocabulary lesson, in which the students act out a word and freeze when the teacher counts down. This is an awesome and engaging way to remember vocabulary words. I think I would definitely use a variation of that activity in my class. In addition, I loved the aspects of creating process drama for poems. Putting yourself in the poem and looking at all of the different perspectives is an awesome way to create a better understanding. Before this reading, I believed process drama to be acting a play out. (reading the line from a play in class) Now, I know that there is so much depth to process drama. It's a creative way to engage your students and I look forward to incorporating it into my future classroom.

Kindle, Nook, IPAD (16)

I think I am going to get a Kindle for Christmas! I have been looking up books that you can buy for it and I found a lot of new graphic novels that I would of never been interested in reading until we discussed them in class. I think I will like this type of story a lot better because I remember details when I see them. I looked at an IPAD in the store just to see if I would like reading on that type of screen and at first I was hesitant because I do like to have the actual paper in front of me, but after reading a story on it I really liked it. I loved that I could highlight and make notes on the side of the pages. I think that this is going to be somethingreally beneficial to me and I even think you could use it in the classroom. So glad I looked into it :)

ESL and Technology (15)

In a lot of my other classes we have been discussing second language acquisition and how students go through a critical period in which they have the most ability to learn a new language. While reading the pieces required theis week, I was often thinking about how to help students who are learning English as their second language and how these programs would be especially helpful for students who have passed up their critical period and need extra help to learn the language. I think that with assistance, blogs, voicethread, and podcasts would all be extremely helpful for a student learning English. Hearing, writing, and speaking a language are the best way to become more knowledgeable in a language. If I ever have the opportunity to use technology in an ESL classroom, I will definitely consider using these many digital tools.

Learning About Voicethread (14)

In this weeks readings, I really enjoyed learning about the program, Voicethread, and how to incorporate it into an ELA classroom. I had been slightly familiar with voicethread before this reading because another student in class had presented it as their digital tool, and therefore I had an idea about how to use it. After reading the article, I realized how beneficial it can be for a classroom, and it's really not very difficult. I took it to be a way to analyze and discuss important aspects of a reading by creating a slideshow of images and audio that the students could create to answer questions or hold discussions about a story. Another cool part about it is you can keep your voicethread private to just your classroom. This allows students to be able to listen and watch other student's voicethreads and learn from them and use them as review. Another aspect discussed in the article was to make sure that students move beyond just events in the story and focus more on critically analyzing issues that are brought up in the story and how they effect the world they live in. The final aspect that is important is to make sure that as a teacher you allow time for in class discussion. By doing this, students are able to present their voicethreads to the class and also use them for discussion in the class.

Graphic Novels (13)

Last weeks readings were about graphic novels and how they are becoming more and more popular as a means for literature in an ELA classroom. Before this reading, I had never heard of "graphic novels"; however, I know what a comic is and the meaning behind creating comics. I thought that it was really interesting that you could potentially use a graphic novel in class to portray the meaning of a story in a different mode. (which really is this focus of this class) I think that they would be very beneficial because they offer pictures to go along with the words. This type of reading would have really helped  me in high school because I often had a difficult time making sense of the writing or what the meaning of a chapter would be when I finished reading it. I am excited to potentially use graphic novels in my ELA classroom and also to start reading them myself. Also, I really like the "fill in the comic" activity we did in class on Monday. I think that it sparks a lot of creativity and the students would really enjoy it. They would each see the wide variety of meanings that you can create of one simple comic strip.

The 20-Shot Short Story (12)

This week in class we created a 20-shot short story on The Hills Like White Elephants. I thought that this project was pretty awesome because it didn't take us a very long time and we were able to get the main point of the project finished in the time we were given. I could definitely see myself using something like this in my classroom. Creating the story board beforehand was extremeley beneficial. It gave us an idea of exactely what came next as far as plot in the story. All we had to do was refer back to the story board to remind us which part we needed to focus on next. In addition, it was interesting to see how simple this was to create. I think that many teachers would be apprehensive about using video in the classroom because of complications; however, I now believe the exact opposite. It is not difficult at all to create the video if you have the proper technology. We used an Iphone to film our short story and that worked perfectly. This would be a good opportunity to incorporate a "Bring your own device" (which I talked about in an earlier blog) where the students could use their own phones to film if cameras were not available.

I really saw the importance of story boarding in this project. It helps to organize all of your thoughts about the story. It was interesting to see how each person in my group represented the story and which parts we thought were the most important. I would definitely recommend this project to current teachers and would also use it in my classroom!

I Created a Podcast! (11)

This weekend me and Linsey worked together to create a podcast. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I had some trouble editing, but I did learn to use Audacity and then export it to an MP3 file. We had some trouble with volume and talking to quickly, but overall it was a good learning experience! The book review was a cool project and I would definitely use it in my classroom.