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.
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