Close Reading Informs Shakespeare Recitation

To prepare for their recitation of Titania's "Set your heart at rest" speech from "A Midsummer Night's Dream," student Acting Companies completed a 10-minute close reading of the passage, looking for evidence of seven different categories: Images, Metaphors, Sounds, Smells, Alliteration, Assonance, and Repetition. Students used CorkboardMe to collect and display the evidence to the class.

Shakespeare Recitation and Audioboo

As an educator, I have grown more intentional in the teaching of oral fluency and public speaking. My students podcast, present oral essays, record video journal entries, and have created narrative non-fiction (think "Radiolab"). Our springtime study of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" focuses as much on traditional close readings of text as it does on presentation and acting technique. This makes historical sense; Shakespeare's plays were not conceived or consumed as written work; they were meant to be seen and heard.

To practice the oral fluency skills of emoting and inflecting, students have three recitation assignments, short passages from the play that they must memorize, mine for meaning and importance, and then present in front of me. To model this recitation for my students, I provided my own version, using the podcasting site Audioboo to record and host my work. Students have this available to them as another resource as they practice and prepare.

This is not the first time students have used Audioboo. If you scroll to the bottom of the page with my recitation on it, there are several student examples from a previous Personal Essay unit.

VITA-Learn Dynamic Landscapes May 10th and 11th, 2012

Attended the Dynamic Landscapes conference put on by VITA-Learn and hosted by Champlain College this past week.

Several colleagues, both within and without my current district, presented Thursday, and I attended and presented Friday. Joyce Babbitt, BRMS librarian, spoke about her Nook reading project, while Katie Rose and Kim Mussante, both of Essex Middle School, spoke about their collaborative 6th grade reading project. Good, hands-on, practical information.

Meanwhile, I gave a presentation focusing upon "updating" the traditional Language Arts curriculum to include 21st century media and tools. I included a number of different projects that I have done with students this year (both long-term and stand-alone), as well as some of the more concrete tools and organizers (aka paper) that I use to scaffold information with students.

The presentation can be found here.

Re-boot

So, having taught in suburban Vermont (yes, there is such a place) for the past 6 years, I will be leaping to suburban Philadelphia this fall. I have been presented with an excellent opportunity to teach 6th grade at a K-12 school at the terminus of the Wissahickon Valley, and am excited for the change.

Especially exciting for me is the opportunity to enter an established and traditional school that realizes its need to introduce some more progressive methodology (integration and collaboration) and increase the application of  technology. I will be using this site to document my own professional transition, as well as to track the work done with a new group of students and colleagues.