The power of modeling once again!

I was taking a webinar with Sharon Taberski (great experience!) and Solana was out of school on break. Since the webinar was an hour long and I had come into the office to take it, I wanted Solana to be occupied, so I put her on a web site with videos of one of her new obsessions, “the Swat Kats.” Every so often, she would come over to my desk to see what I was doing, and I would glance back to make sure she was okay. I had my notebook out and was jotting notes and ideas down from the session. When it was time to leave, I noticed that Solana had been taking notes on her video (see above). “How cute,” I thought and showed it to my husband that night. He immediately pointed out the power of modeling. This was just another reminder to me about how important it is to model with our students.

We can also make use of modeling by referring to series such as the Magic Tree House, where we see the main character taking notes from nonfiction texts. Since so many students have read the Magic Tree House series, this is something to draw on when we model notetaking for older students. Some fantasy books, such as How to Train Your Dragon and Dragonology (dragons are popular in our house!) also have notetaking pages: even though they're on a fantasy subject, you can make the analogy to notetaking for research.

Vokis for paragraph writing

I'm working with some teachers who are using voki to work on the goal of having students write a complete paragraph that sticks to one topic. I modeled brainstorming about my interests, family, and experiences and had students help me choose the most interesting ones to use for my paragraph. They helped me write a first draft of an "About Me" paragraph last week. Next week, I'll show them these final drafts. If we had more time, this would lead really well into digital storytelling. (I had a little difficulty getting my voki to say "La Mega se pega," but I think she got close enough.)

Teacher modeling with podcasts: reflections

Teacher modeling was a key part of podcasting with fifth and sixth grade students this year. This booktalk, by sixth grade teacher Kim Draganchuk on The Loved Dog by Tamar Gellerow, serves not only as a model of an exemplary booktalk (we created a checklist of what students would need to do to "sell" their book to other students), but is also a great example for students of how adults read nonfiction for specific information. My booktalk on Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, served as a model for fiction. Students were motivated by the idea of their booktalks being done as podcasts, especially when we told them their podcasts would be published on the school web site.