Book Talk

Tell Me:  Children, Reading and Talk by Aidan Chambers

The author has provided a website that corresponds to the text with additional resources such a lists of novels, iPad texts, and short stories.  He also lists more professional articles.   

click for Presentation

 A brief synopsis of  The Crane by Reiner Zimnik 

In an ever-expanding city, one young man claims the job of his dreams, operator of the tallest crane around. Since others envy his position, he never leaves his crane, always eager for the day—and work—to begin.

As the seasons pass, man and machine almost become one. "The crane was a giant with iron sinews, and the craneman was its heart." Then people begin to hoard their goods, grinning ravens multiply throughout the land, and war is at hand. But the craneman never falters, remaining at his post even when the land is flooded, ready for reconstruction to begin.  

-taken directly from http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Crane.html?id=ALJ1VhEtITUC

To get a glimpse of the text and illustrations click here!

It appears as though the text deals with dark themes of war, devastation, and isolation but in a charming way.

The following animations were created based on excerpts the author provided to bring book talks to life:  the following dialogues are nine year olds conversing with each other and their teacher.  The teacher is still relatively new to the process.  

Tell Me part 1 by faerieprincess5672 on GoAnimate

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Tell Me part 2 by faerieprincess5672 on GoAnimate

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Tell Me part 3 by faerieprincess5672 on GoAnimate

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Resources
Chambers, A. (1999). Tell me: children reading and talking. Great Britain: Short Run Press.

Using Video for Vocabulary Development

To assist with vocabulary development with kindergarten ELL students, I created this video.  It supports an IB unit that O'Connell school is currently working on (Unit 5-An inquiry into characteristics of living things. After giving a pre-assessment, I determined which animal names were unknown to students.  The unit only has four weeks left so I plan to cover 10 animals a week.  Students are having some difficulty remembering the names so I am hoping that seeing the animals in action in combination with my narration will help them to remember.

*These video clips were all taken from Youtube posts for educational purposes, I do not claim any ownership.

Alyssa's Pi Project

Alyssa's Pi Project

animoto 360p (1) from Ann Thibodeau on Vimeo.

Digital Literacy Project

Click on the picture to get to my literacy project!

Cool Rubrics Creator

This is a very helpful Web 2.0 tool that I discovered while trying to create a rubric for the digital literacy project.  It is so easy to use!  It is a collaborative site so you are able to search for existing rubrics, copy it, and edit it to serve your own purposes.  You can assign different values to calculate scores.  Upon completion, all you have to do is click on the descriptor for the student's work and it automatically scores using fractions and percentages.  If you still need this component, I recommend trying it!

Click on the image to visit the site!

This is the rubric I created for my project:

This is what is left of my final course reflection after I hacked it to stay within the confines of 2 minutes.  It was a much cuter dialogue prior to the editing process but hopefully, my thoughts are still conveyed.  I really wanted to explore a tool I hadn't used before but with the time constraints, I didn't practice using movement or change of scenery much because I didn't want to burn up precious video time.


Final Course Reflection by faerieprincess5672 on GoAnimate

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Sock Puppets Anyone?

First grade ELL students reading When You Grow Up


My Project from Ann Thibodeau on Vimeo.

Finally, (thanks to Stephanie for teaching me how to export this!)  this is my first attempt at incorporating the Sock Puppets app.  This is not the best one but apparently I didn't save my favorite one.  Students were reading a Reader's Theater script from Reading A to Z.  They loved this activity and have been asking for new scripts every week!

One of the limitations of the app is the 90 second recording time.  However, it is possible to record the entire play in parts.  The app has the option to share to the camera roll.  From there, you can upload all the parts into iMovie to edit and then share out to Vimeo.  From Vimeo, the video is easily embedded to blogs and Wikis.  Voila!!

This is another script from Reading A to Z.  The students are second grade ELL students with a much longer script.  I'm not sure if I would go much higher because it gets rather lengthy.



Harry And The Horrible Toothache from Ann Thibodeau on Vimeo.