I would like to start out by saying that I am thankful that this was directed at middle school students. Particularly since I happen to know for a fact that most middle school students love anything with lots of pictures. It is very exciting to me to have a chance to work with students on literary elements that doesn’t actually involve any real reading. This assures that even my lower students will have the opportunity to learn many things that they need to know without feeling like they are constantly behind in what is read.
I would also like to say that I bought a digital recorder for my struggling readers, because our school doesn’t have any way of recording. Unfortunately, because I don’t have any very good models for how to use the recorder, I have struggled with what to do with these lower kids. I am overjoyed by the idea that I can have them read THEIR OWN stories based on a wordless picture book! As an adult, I think that it would be a lot of fun to show my own interpretation of a story from pictures.
I have also jumped on the bandwagon of modeling everything to my students. I want them to do well, and I have found that they only do well once they completely understand what it is that they need to do. And how can they understand it if we just TELL them what to do? I love the idea of showing them how I would go through the first few pages of a wordless story and then handing it over to the students to “read” to their classmates. That could be a particularly exciting prospect for struggling readers, I’m sure!!!
I agree these articles provided a lot of great teaching ideas to put into use in the classroom. I am glad you finally found a use for the taperecorder. I know that another teacher at our school will sometimes allow her struggling students to tell their story (for any writing assignment) into the taperecorder so they can focus solely on getting their ideas together. After they have told their stories then they work on writing it from listening to the tape. I think modeling is amazing and I have really focused on doing this more than ever this year.