Three, Two, One...Action!

My Students

Imagine being able to videotape yourself in a commercial, during an interview, or giving a presentation and watching it back to reflect on your performance. What powerful, self-generated feedback and reflections that would foster! This is what I want students in my classroom to experience.

I have eleven energetic fourth graders who are uniquely talented.

I am a learning support teacher and my students have various disabilities and functioning levels. My students are diagnosed with mental retardation, specific learning disabilities, autism, emotional disturbances, speech and language impairments, and other health impairments. Some of my students are included in the general education classroom for all of their instruction and get extra support from paraeducators, others receive all of their instruction in my learning support classroom, and some have a hybrid between both settings. Last year students worked as a team to creatively write, film, and act in commercials to promote events happening in our classroom. It was very difficult because we do not have an iPad assigned to our classroom nor did we have a microphone or tripod. Students were extremely motivated to improve their speaking and listening skills to be in front of the camera, but our opportunities were limited.

My Project

I collaborate with the speech therapist to plan authentic learning experiences that combine academic, social, and language tasks. Speaking and listening skills are often thought of as soft skills and typically pushed aside to make time for traditional subjects like reading, writing, and math. The PA Common Core Curriculum, which has been universally adopted by public schools, contains speaking and listening standards under the umbrella of English Language Arts. These standards include comprehension, collaboration, and presentation of knowledge and ideas. Many of my students receive speech therapy twice a week to address articulation, language, and social pragmatic skill deficits. Within my reading and writing class, I use these developing areas for students to generalize skills in authentic ways. To better instruct and foster student reflection on their listening and speaking skills, we are asking for an iPad, tripod, and microphone.

This equipment will be used to videotape commercials, interviews, oral presentations, social skills role plays, and reader's theaters that students perform.

It will allow them to reflect on their speaking and listening skills by viewing their strengths on screen as well as areas for continued practice. Seeing themselves live on video is a more powerful reflection tool than receiving verbal feedback from their peers or teachers. Thanks for considering this motivating opportunity for my students.