We had a Chiefs player come to talk about character traits with our students. They LOVED it! I'm on a mission to turn my students into journalists. I have to be honest, my teaching writing skills are just not that great. We're wrapping up our huge D.A.R.E. essay and now I want to teach news reporting. Just the facts: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. I sent out my first reporters today and hope to have them podcasting and putting it up on my school webpage. I already have a couple wanting to interview our principal and a couple wanting to report on our field trip to The Nutcracker. I think I've finally given my students a purpose for writing. Hope it WORKS :)
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What a GREAT picture janine! Your students are so fortunate to have you as their teacher. I can hear the excitement in your blog and what a great learning environment! How different my confidence level of writing and learning would have been growing up in a classroom like yours. Keep up the great work!
ReplyDeleteI miss teaching older kids! Having your students podcast is a great idea! A lot more engaging having an audience to publish to rather than just writing a paper for one person to read.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you can kind of avoid writing the reports and have them be 'podcast only' reports. (since you said its not one of your teaching strengths.) You clearly have a passion for teaching them to be journalists, and let's face it, by the time they are out of school, recordings are going to be one of many 'standard' formats for reports. So why not produce the reports as podcasts? The written part could just summarize the podcast, and they would have to create a script anyway for the podcast, so they do have to develop the skills to write down their thoughts in a cohesive way.
ReplyDeleteWould you believe me if I told you I have been in that KC Wolf costume before? I won a contest with Milk and the Chiefs in 5th grade and the prize was an assembly with KC Wolf. Unfortunately, I had to put on that stinky outfit and waltz around like a fool. What a reward, huh?
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of having the students podcast, but I'm a little less supportive of completely eliminating the writing portion of the assignment. While I agree audio/video reporting is becoming widely acceptable, I still think you might want to have students write a script or outline their ideas beforehand. This is such a tough battle with me, because I teach English. I get frustrated when students can't use written communication effectively, but I want to push them to experiment with other forms of media. I'm interested to hear what you decide to do with your students. Keep me posted.