Flipping Out for Reading

My Students

Do you like to read? Is reading easy for you? These are examples of questions that my students had to answer on a reading interest survey. Sixty percent of them said they don't like reading because it's too hard and 83% said it's boring. The way I teach reading does not put a sparkle in my students' eyes!

I teach 23 second graders at a public elementary school.

They range in ages between 7 and 9 years old. They are very sweet and loving students and give great hugs! I am very fortunate that they are in my classroom this year. Eighty-five percent of my students are on free lunches. Twenty-five percent of my students are students who are mainstreamed in my classroom. Seven of my students are at least a year behind in reading and six students have been retained in a previous grade. This group of second graders also have low vocabulary skills. We stop a lot during reading groups to discuss words because my students don't know what a word means. They have difficulty sounding out a new word because they have never heard the word,and it doesn't make sense to them even when they make all the sounds. This low vocabulary is one cause of low comprehension. They don't know what words mean; therefore, they can't make connections to what they have read or correctly answer comprehension questions.

My Project

Students seem to come alive when a video camera is placed in front of them. Out come their personalities and excitement! Why not combine reading and video? This Flip camera is easy for second graders to use. After this project is funded, my students will do lots of different activities: make trailers for books, record skits from plays or books they have read or written themselves, act out vocabulary words, act out cause-and-effect relationships, act out favorite parts of a book and tell the audience the setting, characters, and plot of the story, record each other reading stories, and make paper sequence movies about stories they read. These activities will change my students' lives for the better because they will want to read and they will be learning reading skills without even realizing it because (and I love this part) they will be having fun. They will learn vocabulary, comprehension, parts of a story, fluency, and phonics to become lifelong readers.

Right now my students do not like reading because to them it's boring and hard.

We read in reading groups and we go over vocabulary and comprehension but it's monotonous. My students say, "Do we have to read today?" This Flip camcorder project will impact my students because they will become excited about reading, sparking an interest which will lead to building comprehension and vocabulary skills. I want to see a sparkle in my students' eyes while they are reading!