Blog about a blog

At http://elementaryteacherblog.blogspot.com/, an entertaining young teacher shares some of her classroom experiences. In reading her blog, I enjoyed the funny stories of a child leaving the sleeves of his shirt and a pair of scissors in the bathroom, of the students' idea that stealling is worse than murder, and of a young girl who decided to forge her aunt's signature on a letter home. This blog isn't all about the funny events though, the author also blogs about the activities that have been done in class that she finds actually work.

One blog this teacher posted about was introducing technology into reading. She recorded each of her fourth grade students reading a chapter from a level-appropriate book. Then she used these recording to keep one group of students occupied while she was working with the other group. What a great idea! The one thing that I would worry about though, is that listening students would fail to read along with the recording. The purpose, as I understand it, is to help the students learn vocabulary that they may not yet know, and keep them from goofing around. I can see the students I am currently teaching using this listening/reading time as a great time to slyly entertain one another. This being the opposite affect of my intention.

Another technique the author recommends is Reader's Theatre. I've heard of this technique before, and as I have a minor in theatre and have written a couple of one acts, I really like the idea. As she explains it, Reader's Theatre starts the students off with a simple reading of a script the teacher creates. (She likes to take chapters from books that have subjects all the students will enjoy and get a kick out of, but this could really work for any fictional book that has a number of different speaking characters.) Once the students have done their read-through, they can they get up and act out the script. She mentions that one of her fellow teachers will video-record these acts and post them on a website for the student's to see later. I can see myself doing this, with the permission of the actors of course. It may not only be a fun learning experience, but a great confidence booster as well.