Standard 2: Literacy and Reading
2.4.1. Literacy Strategies: Candidates collaborate with classroom teachers to reinforce a wide variety of reading instructional strategies to ensure P-12 students are able to create meaning from text.
Artifact:
Instructional Digital Presentation
Any teacher who has taught an on-grade level or below-grade level class knows how difficult it can be to get students excited about research. They beg their teacher to let them read novels, write essays, or explicate poetry – anything to avoid the horrid research project. And who can blame them? Traditionally, research projects are dull because students must read through articles and books, regurgitate facts on paper, attempt to avoid plagiarism, and try to make sense of MLA citations.
For my McDaniel Multimedia class, I created an instructional digital presentation to serve as my introductory activity for an I-Search project (explained below). This instructional digital presentation is a tool for the classroom teacher and school librarian to use in the media center before students begin the research process. During the activity, students watch short videos, browse websites to garner interest, and read website articles to identify specific focuses. Through my instructional digital presentation, students access a variety of reading materials and the teacher utilizes various teaching strategies. The students finish the assignment by independently finding meanings from the texts they read and view. The presentation not only allows students to create meaning; it also asks them to find and use implications specific to their own lives.
A few years ago, I developed an I-Search project with my school librarian for my directed level tenth-grade students. An I-Search paper is a bit more attainable for students functioning at a basic level because it takes the formality out of writing and allows the students to focus on inquiry into subjects of interest. Where a formal research paper answers a student or teacher-generated research question in third-person point-of-view, an I-Search paper is designed so that students document their process for research. The focus is teaching strong research skills without overwhelming students with stringent writing requirements.
The instructional digital presentation that I created to precede the actual research is a PowerPoint, and, as aforementioned, it digitally covers a number of reading strategies. Students work through a reading process as they follow along with the PowerPoint. During prereading, they brainstorm lists of celebrity scandals. They then read through a number of published scandal lists on the web, identifying scandals of which they have heard. With a partner, they question and summarize the reasons celebrities may act the way they do. Following their discussion, the whole class watches video clips of celebrities embarrassing themselves in front of the media. After the videos, the students browse the website Look to the Stars, where they examine a number of positive public figures (of their own choice) and read through the charities each celebrity supports. Once they have read, they review their favorites and chart information about the charities, especially the ones that resonate with them. The instructional digital presentation ends with videos of Madonna and Robin Williams explaining their roles within two charities. The students note similarities and differences between the messages from the two celebrities. They then submit their completed chart, which includes a final summary of the two celebrity-charity combinations they wish to research.
The summer after I created the instructional digital presentation to accompany the I-Search project, I introduced the project to colleagues during curriculum workshops. We honed and improved upon the overall project, including the introductory activity. It is now posted as a possible informational writing unit for any tenth-grade teacher. This collaboration helped improve the overall product. When assignments and units occur in the library, especially research projects, the necessity for collaboration is paramount. Classroom teachers understand the reading strategies needed for students to understand the subject matter. School librarians need classroom teachers just as much as teachers need librarians. The collaborative process is entirely necessary for students to understand enough about a project to create meaning from the text.
I had taught the I-Search unit twice before I created this introductory assignment. And I will not deny that the creation of this PowerPoint took me a long time. I use PowerPoint often, and now have access to a Promethean Board and ActivInspire in my classroom. But, oftentimes, I have time only to create basic presentations that do not reach out to my students the way this instructional digital presentation did. I work hard to avoid being in this rut because when I do spend time to create digital lessons of interest, the quality of student work is superior. Projects and assignments that integrate a number of reading strategies and strive to make learning meaningful for students do take time. However, the reward is so much greater than the effort – a presentation or lesson that elicits buy-in from teenagers is invaluable.
For my McDaniel Multimedia class, I created an instructional digital presentation to serve as my introductory activity for an I-Search project (explained below). This instructional digital presentation is a tool for the classroom teacher and school librarian to use in the media center before students begin the research process. During the activity, students watch short videos, browse websites to garner interest, and read website articles to identify specific focuses. Through my instructional digital presentation, students access a variety of reading materials and the teacher utilizes various teaching strategies. The students finish the assignment by independently finding meanings from the texts they read and view. The presentation not only allows students to create meaning; it also asks them to find and use implications specific to their own lives.
A few years ago, I developed an I-Search project with my school librarian for my directed level tenth-grade students. An I-Search paper is a bit more attainable for students functioning at a basic level because it takes the formality out of writing and allows the students to focus on inquiry into subjects of interest. Where a formal research paper answers a student or teacher-generated research question in third-person point-of-view, an I-Search paper is designed so that students document their process for research. The focus is teaching strong research skills without overwhelming students with stringent writing requirements.
The instructional digital presentation that I created to precede the actual research is a PowerPoint, and, as aforementioned, it digitally covers a number of reading strategies. Students work through a reading process as they follow along with the PowerPoint. During prereading, they brainstorm lists of celebrity scandals. They then read through a number of published scandal lists on the web, identifying scandals of which they have heard. With a partner, they question and summarize the reasons celebrities may act the way they do. Following their discussion, the whole class watches video clips of celebrities embarrassing themselves in front of the media. After the videos, the students browse the website Look to the Stars, where they examine a number of positive public figures (of their own choice) and read through the charities each celebrity supports. Once they have read, they review their favorites and chart information about the charities, especially the ones that resonate with them. The instructional digital presentation ends with videos of Madonna and Robin Williams explaining their roles within two charities. The students note similarities and differences between the messages from the two celebrities. They then submit their completed chart, which includes a final summary of the two celebrity-charity combinations they wish to research.
The summer after I created the instructional digital presentation to accompany the I-Search project, I introduced the project to colleagues during curriculum workshops. We honed and improved upon the overall project, including the introductory activity. It is now posted as a possible informational writing unit for any tenth-grade teacher. This collaboration helped improve the overall product. When assignments and units occur in the library, especially research projects, the necessity for collaboration is paramount. Classroom teachers understand the reading strategies needed for students to understand the subject matter. School librarians need classroom teachers just as much as teachers need librarians. The collaborative process is entirely necessary for students to understand enough about a project to create meaning from the text.
I had taught the I-Search unit twice before I created this introductory assignment. And I will not deny that the creation of this PowerPoint took me a long time. I use PowerPoint often, and now have access to a Promethean Board and ActivInspire in my classroom. But, oftentimes, I have time only to create basic presentations that do not reach out to my students the way this instructional digital presentation did. I work hard to avoid being in this rut because when I do spend time to create digital lessons of interest, the quality of student work is superior. Projects and assignments that integrate a number of reading strategies and strive to make learning meaningful for students do take time. However, the reward is so much greater than the effort – a presentation or lesson that elicits buy-in from teenagers is invaluable.