Buddy Reading

My sister recommended this book to me since her son enjoyed reading it with her when he was Solana's age. (Thanks to Joan and Benjamin!) It's nice for partner reading, since each person's lines as well as the lines to read together are highlighted in different colors. This one is the "scary" version, with what they call "short tales" which seem more like poems to me about monsters, zombies, ghouls, etc., always a favorite topic at our house as long as they aren't too scary, which these definitely aren't. Below is a short flip video of us reading the introduction.

Real Cool Cat

K-1 students I've worked with are fascinated by the flip cams, but like Solana, often just want to record themselves making silly faces. Since pre-school, Solana has loved using the flip cam to record songs she has learned at school. (See "real cool cat" example below. Still having shaky cam issues!) I'd like to try using the flip cams with students to record them singing songs or reciting poetry.

Daniel Boom a.k.a. Loudboy model booktalk with flip camera

This is a booktalk a colleague helped me record as a model in preparation for fifth grade students using the flip cams to record their own booktalks. (Thanks, Gwen!!)It was done in one take, so the teacher and I had the students give me feedback on how I could improve it if I were to record it again. Solana loves Daniel Boom and I thought this series might be appealing to fifth graders. I'm still working with my teacher colleagues on the best way to teach this series of lessons as well as deal with the classroom logistics of making the videos with minimum background noise.

Using flip cams for booktalks

This was the first time I tried using flip cams informally with students in groups. They're a great tool for student engagement as well as critiquing, sharing and reflecting. Students were asked to take turns filming each other sharing a book from their independent reading with a group. I realized that we needed to do more modeling and instruction for both the student speaker and the student using the flip cam. (Note the shaky cameral syndrome.) We had a huge issue with noise in the classroom and will need to problem solve around that next time.


The two book choices below struck me because they reminded me of a great presentation by Kathleen Baxter I recently attended on getting boys interested in reading. She advised an audience made up mostly of school librarians to go with the students passions and not expect students (especially boys) to want to read the kinds of books we like.

When I see "BMX" or "sports" on student interest inventories, I can't say I feel excited by the topics. However, after I heard the students below speak about their book selections, I really did become interested in Mat Hoffman's biography as well as the sports science series. This experience reminded me that we're always working on expanding students as readers, but by allowing them to share their interests, they are helping us grow as readers, too. These two students took the assignment seriously and with some more practice, could create some interesting videos in the future. I liked their technique of filming pages from the book: I hadn't thought of that.