For my Literacy Project, I created a lesson that incorporated the use of technology. I decided to you VoiceThread with my students since it is almost the end of the school year and it is one of the new pieces of technology that I am most comfortable using with my students.
With my class, I had students select their favorite book they read during the school year. Then they wrote a book review based on a set of features we developed as a group. Before writing, their book review, they looked for an image of the book or drew a cover of their own for the book. After they wrote their book reviews, they had peers help edit and revise, and then practiced reading their book review aloud for fluency. I then set them up to audio record their book review in VoiceThread, which had its trails due to the microphone not picking up sound. The result was not thoroughly edited but I am proud with my result and first attempt at using VoiceThread with my students.
My ultimate goal is to have this particular VoiceThread grow beyond just the books I have here. I would like to continue to add books or remove book reviews. I would like my incoming sixth graders to write their responses to these sixth graders and share what they liked about the books, if they choose to read that book based on the review.
Eventually, I would like to create leveled book review VoiceThreads. Since I have a diverse group of readers at many different reading levels, I would like to create VoiceThreads for struggling reluctant readers and VoiceThreads for my advanced readers. I can see this happening during the next school year.