Critique of the Painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze

NPR Morning Edition October 28, 2002. This NPR program discusses the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. We are listening to this after we read the Introduction to Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer.

AudioPal: Another Way to Add Audio to Your Blog

AudioPal is another site that you can use to record audio for your blog. While it allows for a typed message to be played back, the recording side only allows 60 seconds. This would work great for text to audio, though.

Using Vocaroo for Blogging

Today we are going to add some audio to our blog. Blogger is notorious for being difficult to add audio to it. I ran into this website last year and found it works really well for adding audio to my blog. Here is a link to the page. I would give directions, but it is so simple I don't think I need to.

Learning from Mrs.She and Little Voices, Little Scholars

Here is Devon writing a story for me. I showed him the excellent stories Mrs. She's students are posting on her blog as inspiration. Devon wrote and recorded this story in less than an hour. Special thanks to Cole who listened to Devon practice.

Journey to the Center of the Earth: Redux 2009

My students just finished reading an excerpt from Jules Verne's classic story Journey to the Center of the Earth. Last year my students wrote stories describing what happened when they went to the center of the Earth. This year, I created a short story starter for my students to use for inspiration. Zac, Rosa, and Saul lend their voices to begin our stories.



The stories will be posted on the A Novel Approach to Reading blog when they are finished.

Here is a link where I explain how you can get the novel on audio for free.

A Titanic Undertaking: Creating and Recording Radio Broadcasts

If you have been following the blog this week, you have been reading about our experimental reading assignments. Here is a visual representation of what we did this week.
Here is Rosa and Natalia reading the story from the reading text on Tuesday. We had already read the story once in class, but the students had to read the story and take notes over the information. Rosa is listening to the story on the ipod.
Here you can see Parker watching a video downloaded from Discovery Streaming. The video shows Robert Ballard's discovery of the wreck of the Titanic.Here is Rosa again recording the audio of her radio story. Notice the microphone placed next to the aquarium.
I placed the microphone next to the aquarium so that it would record the sound of water running. I hoped this would lend some authenticity to the recordings.

Here is Rosa's broadcast live from the Titanic:

Here is Nathan's story live with Bob Ballard:

The rest of the recordings will be posted on the Novel Approach to Reading Blog next week when we have finished them.

Student Reflections on This Weeks Reading Assignments.

Here are three interviews I did with students. The topic is reflecting on the skills we used for studying vocabulary.

Slendy talks about this weeks work.

Amanda talks about what she learned from doing the skills.

Meagan talks about how she learns vocabulary.

Student Interview: Devin Talks About Using Technology in Class

Here is a short interview with Devin. We discuss his use of Power Point in class and his attitude toward using technology in the classroom.

The Three Century Woman: A Classroom Discussion

Here is the class discussion we had about the story The Three Century Woman. This does not include specific skill and comprehension questions. Instead the goal was to help the students make connections between the story and what they already know.

Using Vocaroo to Give Students a Voice

We are reading the novel Holes in class. In the story the main character Stanley's great-grandfather was robbed by the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow. Although Stanley tells us his great-grandfather was robbed, we don't know how it happened. Since this was a "hole" in the story, we decided to fill it.

We used the incredibly useful website Vocaroo.com to record the stories we wrote to fill in what really happened when Kissin' Kate robbed the first Stanley Yelnats. Vocaroo allows us to easily record and post audio, something that I have real trouble doing with Blogger. We used a Blue Snowball microphone to record the audio. Here is the link to the stories my students wrote and recorded.

The Practicality of a Teachable Moment Part 2: What Do They Sound Like?

This picture shows how we played and recorded from the 45's. I used the Ion TTUSBOSxL to play the 45's and record them as mp3's. I then uploaded the snippets to GCast and created a podcast which I embedded below.

Here is the conclusion to our experiment. Listen to each of the snippets recorded from the 45's and you decide which ones sound best.

Paul Revere is not a Horse Part 2

Paul Revere was made famous for his "Midnight Ride". Read the poem then you can go to his Wikipedia page to learn more about him. Also read The Midnight Riders, April 19 1775 by Roger Saunders. After you read about him, check out this video. Then read this excerpt from:


THE TRUE STORY OF PAUL REVERE

By Charles Gettemy from Archiving Early America

"Most men like Revere--- somewhat above the average of the mass, but not possessing the usual elements of enduring fame-- pass out of life eulogized by their fellow-citizens; remembered by a circle of admiring and respecting friends until they also pass away; and are ultimately forgotten, finding no place upon the pages of written history.Â

"Paul Revere was rescued from this fate by an accident-- the witchery of a poet's Imagination. Â His famous ride on the night of the 18th of April, 1775, remained unsung, if not unhonored, for eighty-eight years, or until Longfellow in 1863 made it the text for his Landlord's Tale in the Wayside Inn.

"It is to Longfellow's simple and tuneful ballad that most persons undoubtedly owe their knowledge of the fact that a man of the name of Revere really did something on the eve of the historic skirmish at Lexington which is worth remembering."

Does our society honor Paul Revere as the great hero, or does our society honor the real Paul Revere who simply did his job? Explain your opinion.

Ms. Owens Creates a Podcast

Check out Ms. Owens', Noel's friendly librarian, new podcast! You can click here to go to the site.

Paul Revere is not a Horse

Paul Revere was made famous for his "Midnight Ride". Read the poem then you can go to his Wikipedia page to learn more about him. After you read about him, check out this video. Then read this excerpt from:

THE TRUE STORY OF PAUL REVERE

By Charles Gettemy

"Most men like Revere--- somewhat above the average of the mass, but not possessing the usual elements of enduring fame-- pass out of life eulogized by their fellow-citizens; remembered by a circle of admiring and respecting friends until they also pass away; and are ultimately forgotten, finding no place upon the pages of written history.Â

"Paul Revere was rescued from this fate by an accident-- the witchery of a poet's Imagination. His famous ride on the night of the 18^th of April, 1775, remained unsung, if not unhonored, for eighty-eight years, or until Longfellow in 1863 made it the text for his Landlord's Tale in the Wayside Inn.

"It is to Longfellow's simple and tuneful ballad that most persons undoubtedly owe their knowledge of the fact that a man of the name of Revere really did something on the eve of the historic skirmish at Lexington which is worth remembering."

Does our society honor Paul Revere as the great hero, or does our society honor the real Paul Revere who simply did his job? Explain your opinion.

Mr. Lett asks a Question

Listen to Mr. Lett's question, then post your answer.