I am always inspired by the amazing ideas that teachers are doing around technology. I also related to Hobbs and Moore (2013) feeling of being reserved about using technology in primary grades. I often find myself doing a lot of direct instruction around the area of technology vs. embedding instructional techniques through hands on learning.
One project that students usually connect with is our upcoming animal project. They love researching information both in printed books and online. This is one of the first times that students are reading to learn information as compared to learning to read. This is a big difference from primary students to intermediate students. I was inspired when thinking about how students could present their information in an alternative format that would engage themselves and others into learning more about their animals.
When looking further into alternative options that help students share their ideas I really bounced back and forth between the readings. I really connected to students trying to focus on who their audience is and the purpose of their information. We used a more structured writing format and this is a topic we discuss a lot in writing. Unfortunately, this skill has not transferred into my students reading. They still cannot tell me who this book would appeal or explain the author's purpose in writing the text. Hobbs and Moore (2013) discussed more explicit examples that primary teachers used to sort different TV shows by target audience (p. 170-178). This gave me the idea to connect this to reading. This explicit instruction could allow my students to see why we read the books we read and what we gain from what we read. Hobbs and Moore state that "...we looked at the performance of all students, we found that inference-making about purpose and target audience is highly correlated with students' reading comprehension as measured by standardized reading (but not math) scores" (p. 178). It is essential that we teach these skills even though they are abstract and quiet challenging for 2nd graders to grasp. When these skills are taught, not only do students become critical thinkers about the world around them, but gain deeper understandings of the information they are receiving.
I feel that once my students are able to articulate target audience and purpose they will be able to design an engaging presentation. Hicks (2013) talk about stickiness and the importance presentations being, "simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and storylike" (p. 73). I think as a primary teacher it is important to start small. As a teacher of 7 and 8 year olds I value them creating; simple, concrete and credible presentations as the animal report is focused around research. These three things can help guide my students into a successful presentation. I also found an article that can help other teachers get different ideas about presentations formats. These presentations will help my students stay focused on using credible sources and keeping their presentations simple and clear.
I found this really helpful template for my students if we decide to used Prezi for their animal reports. This video help explain some important design elements and will challenge my students to find photos, main ideas of their paragraphs and allow them to video important information.
taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX7Gh806He8
Overall, from the articles the issues that more resonated with me were how to get my students to think about target audiences and purpose in meaningful ways that connect to our classroom learning. I also want to allow my students unique and engaging ways to present their knowledge that connects to important 21st century skills.
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