Please watch this clip and respond by midnight on the 20th of August. You should write at least 2 responses. Be sure that you're responding to your classmates.
Happy posting!
Be sure to use class texts to support your answers.
REMEMBER -- there are not really any right or wrong answers, just non-supported answers.
o What strengths do you see/hear in the clip?
o What weaknesses do you hear/see in this clip?
o What would you do to deepen the students’ literacy skills?
o What do you think about your classmates’ ideas for assisting the
student? Did their ideas help you? Do you disagree with their ideas?
This posting isn't a normal literacy clip--it seems more like a performance to me. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I interpreted these clips as students who had memorized passages from famous books. Undoubtedly I hear students using intonation and a great voice for narrating their readings. But I almost feel like that only comes from rote memorization--a task which does not show understanding. Students might be able to say words, but their comprehension could be completely lacking. That was a phenomenon I found with my students this summer at institute--many of them could read the words correctly but had no idea what they read. Whether that was the case here, I do not know. But something that gauged their actual understanding here would be important to truly know their literacy skills, especially given how quick the cuts were between students.
ReplyDelete-Robbie Havdala
I would have to know more about this lesson to accurately pick out its strengths and weaknesses. The students seem to be doing a fine job of reciting Hamlet, but I too thought that there is no way of knowing if they were comprehending their own words. I would consider this a strong lesson if the students could define the vocabulary words they were using and explain the significant of the soliloquy. One obvious strength to the lesson is the use of technology to engage students. I bet these high schoolers were excited about being on YouTube with their friends and teachers. If this were my lessson, the video would be a great final activity for a larger unit on Hamlet.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the technology was probably a great way to engage the students and give them a chance to perform. Like Robbie and Nina, I'm also curious about the level that students are able to comprehend the text from this activity. Even though comprehension could be lacking, I still think there can be value from memorizing and reciting the work. Shakespeare can be difficult to read fluently even for students that don't normally struggle with fluency, so I can see where you would want students to have multiple exposures to this type of text to help them better comprehend the meaning. The NRP article we read talked about how fluency is often ignored, and I think this can be especially true in middle school and high school. We would like to hope that our students don't need help with fluency by that age, but the truth is that they probably do need explicit fluency instruction, which will probably need to be very engaging for students at this level.
ReplyDelete-Ashley Bedford
The strengths I see in the clip are reading engagement and oral fluency. The weakness I see is that from this exercise it does not appear students are practicing any decoding skills. I'm also not sure if this exercise would help students with the comprehension strategies that the NRP and Beers book When Kids Can't Read advocated for. Of course oral fluency and engagement are important pieces of reading, but students need to be equipped with skills that enable them to approach any text with confidence. Students must be able to retain what they have read and think about it deeply. According to the NRP, "Comprehension is critically important to the development of children's reading skills and therefore to the ability to obtain an education."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ashley that the teacher's instructional choice to use technology as an entry point to Shakespeare is an effective means of engaging students and helping develop their fluency in a difficult, dense text. However, like Nina, I feel I need to know more about the lesson that this activity was a part of in order to accurately assess its inherent value. I am wondering if the lesson was activity driven or objective driven, and I am wondering if students were explicitly told its purpose and internalized it, or if they were simply excited about being in You Tube.
First and foremost, my students and I also did a video for Read Aloud Day all based on classic Latin American Literature texts. The obvious strength of this video clip is that the students are evidently engaged with the text, invested in the multidimensional thematic significance of the texts. I was especially impressed with the intonations and oral fluency, as well as the performance and how students used theatrical techniques to express clear comprehension of the text. A weakness that was evident to me is that there wasn't a space that allowed for student interpretation of the text, although for me their oral fluency, confidencie, and theatrical performances were evident comprehensions for me. It would have been critical to have a thinking aloud process.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher that works with 8th graders in East Harlem, technology is an immensely useful tool to use in a classroom where students are not interested or invested in engaging in "classic" texts. Therefore, using technology can be the hook that gets them but once again these stepping stones cannot be acheived without making a connection with the students because they will be the ones connecting to the text.
I know that some of the people that posted before me had some issues with this video, but this has been my favorite clip to watch so far. The strengths I saw in this clip were that it showed fluency of the text, as well as engagement. Although these two aspects of literacy do not necessarily mean the student is comprehending the text, is it a start.
ReplyDeleteThis clip made me smile because it shows students excited to recite the text. Yes, the could've just memorized their line and moved on, but I am hoping the teacher would have compiled this video and showed the students the final clip. Seeing themselves perform such strong words will teach them that their is deep meaning behind this difficult text, and they are advanced enough to realize this emotion and actually put it behind their words.
Not every video clip we watch will show students being versed in all aspects of literacy, but this one shows that they are engaged and invested. From the articles we've been reading in class, these two components are a great way to putting a student on the road to comprehension. I loved this video because it provided a unique approach to reading engagement through the use of technology. I would love to tape my students in my own classroom.
I really like this clip as well. First of all, we've been talking about how catchy pieces like songs and poems can be really great for developing fluency. I think memorization can be good for fluency as well. There also appears to be at least some level of comprehension, because for the students to speak their lines with the correct emotion or tone they would have to understand what the text is expressing. I think this is a really powerful way to practice literacy skills and engage students with classic literature that might otherwise seem inaccessible to them.
ReplyDeleteOne way I would try to deepen these students' literacy skills would be to probe deeper for comprehension. A good way of doing this could be as simple as having the students translate the text into their own, modern day vernacular. This could also be a cool way to explore the "code switching" lesson we talked about in class. You could highlight the differences between classic literary diction and that of modern teens.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with Mary on the idea of memorization as a useful tool in school. I believe that it encourages literacy classes to become a form of acting rather than reading or understanding a text. For all we know, these students may have listened to a teacher say these few sentences and they repeated them again and again until their pronounciation was correct. But if one word was changed in the sentence, or if one phrase was taken out of order, the students would be clueless. To put it bluntly, I think memorization like this turns students into "trained parrots"--where we just repeat what someone else says, having no real idea what the point is. Anyone can play Simon Says. But not everyone can read. That's why memorization doesn't work.
ReplyDelete-Robbie Havdala
I actually really like the idea of using performance to enhance literacy, but not at the cost of it. I agree that we would probably need more background information on the lesson itself ot fully judge, but I think performance can be a big plus. The only thing a literacy teacher would have to be cognizant of is the embarassment factor. you would never want a student to feel pressured or embarrassed if they're bad at memorizing or struggle with fluency and reading aloud.
ReplyDeletebut i honestly think that in order to have the level of performance that these students had, there must of bit a lot of discussion on the meaning of the passage and the way in which the words work together. I remember learning sonnets in high school and having to do a lot of work to understand our selection, reading, rereading, adn rereading, until we understood what the character meant and we could take the right approach to memorizing it and performing it in front of hte whole class. having to act out a scene or even just a few lines means having to fully beleive and understand what you are saying. that takes a good deal of literacy skills, especially when it comes to shakespeare.
so i totally agree with hannah. this one was by far my favorite (even though i expected to like the x-men one...)
Strengths/Response to classmates:
ReplyDelete-Adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet soliloquy is fun to watch because of the variance of tone, the purposeful use of expressive language and body language.
-Clearly the people in the video have had multiple opportunities to interact with the text before this filming; they’ve reread the same line, or perhaps the same text, over and over, and, as Stephi added, they probably have thought carefully about the meaning of the passage and how the words work together to create meaning.
Weaknesses/Response to classmates:
-As others have remarked, we don’t get much insight into the student’s reading skills, per say, but this does serve as a reminder that literacy is not something that only exists in workshops or private readings; it comes alive on the sage and in expression, as well.
What would I do to deepen the students’ literacy skills:
-While this video is a fun, interesting compilation of many people and voices, it is hard to say what I would do to deepen the students’ literacy skills because the clips of each person are so short.
I actually really value the memorization of Shakespeare as a learning tool especially as practice for a student's oral fluency. To recite Shakespeare is extremely high level oral fluency, and to do so, as these students do, with intonation and physical expression is extremely powerful. Also, the teacher is allowing the students to make future text to text or media to text analyses. Learning a soliloquy of Shakespeare's opens future doors for students and allows students to increase their comprehension. Furthermore, my using a media format, the teacher is increasing the student investment in the material because not only are they performing it for each other in the classroom but for the whole world!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI loved this clip. I remember how wonderful a feeling it was to be able to understand and correctly recite Shakespeare, and it was a pleasure to watch how passionate many of these students were about the text they were reading. I was very impressed by their oral fluency. They recited the lines perfectly, and for most, with gusto. If these students are confident enough to engage so much with Hamlet, I can only imagine how deep they delve into other texts.
ReplyDeleteIn whatever school this is they must be holding them to high expectations if they are reading and performing Shakespeare, which is great. I think reading plays aloud is a must if you are going to teach them. It helps the students to understand more, it is good reading aloud practice, and it gives them opportunity to really engage with the text.
This was my favorite clip, perhaps because it was in a classroom environment and I could imagine myself standing behind the camera filming these students. I think performance pieces can greatly enhance literacy lessons if used appropriately as many classmates above me have expressed. The article from "Reading Research Quarterly" found that student's third favorite reading activity is reading plays and poetry out loud. I feel like if this performance piece was part of an end product for students at the end of a rigorous unit on Shakespeare then it is more than appropriate. I also like the use of technology. I think this is something that students can be proud of and can show to friends and even more importantly, their families.
ReplyDeleteI found an interesting short article called, "Teaching Shakespeare with Youtube." It is mostly about using YouTube as a resource in your classroom. Some ideas are useful and some ideas are not but it's worth the read.
It's a .pdf file so I can't attach it directly but if you go to the website below and scroll down, you should see it.
http://www.lomonico.com/EnglishJournalSeptember2009.htm
Strengths-The students appear to be very invested in their performances. They are reciting Shakespeare, but I also get the impression that they know that they are part of a video that is sending a message about something bigger. They are aware this and their own interpretations of their lines also contribute to the message in different ways. They make the lines their own and are clearly invested.
ReplyDeleteWeakness- It's difficult to assess the students' literacy skills because their clips are not very long. I would hope that these students not only memorized one line, but the entire speech and that they have an understanding of the context of the speech, how they can interpret it and its connection to their lives.
I am going to agree with Mary and Hannah in that I feel the memorization or continuous reading of one section of the text is still extremely helpful for the students. For the same reason that we could use a read aloud book for independent reading or shared reading, memorized text or a text that we already understand is something that can benefit our ability to function as readers. I would suggest that any student from that class could probably read through this passage from Shakespeare without much difficulty at this point. Repetition is not a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with China about the value of having students memorize Shakespeare as a tool to improve fluency. Without having any other context, such as if students performed more than just one line, it seems like an effective way to expose students to new vocabulary and ways of speaking. Additionally, the strengths of the video are that students are all engaged and invested, which always helps to form a connection with texts and with learning in general.
ReplyDeleteAs Tyler points out, repetition is a great tool for increasing a student's fluency and this video can even be used in the teacher's class as an instructional tool. What I would caution the teacher on, however, and what I would suggest as an area of improvement is to find some way to assess comprehension of the text. Rote memorization is effective for fluency but not for comprehension.
I agree with those who have mentioned memorization as an valuable teaching tool for students. It can not only help to improve fluency, but it also increases student confidence and by in memorizing a work of poetry, students have an opportunity to understand that a good reader uses intonation when speaking and reads with ease and pauses in appropriate places in the text. The strengths in this video had to do with student engagement and fluency and if we knew more about the activity we might be able to determine what else the students were and were not getting out of this activity.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Genna that it seemed like students were attempting to convey a bigger message than just memorizing a line or two for the video. I think it could be helpful in this exercise to have students recite a bigger passage and then edit out parts for the video (may be what they did), which would require more effort than just memorizing one line. I would also have students engage in discussions and other comprehension activities before having them complete the unit with the video.
ReplyDeleteAccording to neuropsychologist Norman Doidge, memorization is in fact a powerful tool for strengthening connections in the brain that contribute to oral fluency and flexible verbal articulation of the internal thought process- arguably major factors in literacy. It is precisely because there was, once upon a time, such a stress on memorization of lengthy pieces of literature in the traditional educational model, that Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were able to speak so eloquently for hours on end during the debates of 1858. As intelligent and elegant a speaker President Obama is, he still relies on a teleprompter.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1960's, many educators started to believe that aspects of the traditional educational model stifled creativity, individuality, and personal development. People started to label memorization of poems and literature as rote and meaningless, when in fact, it strengthens many of the neuro-connections that enhance literacy.
Petra's comment really got me thinking about my earlier response to this video. I said that I would only consider this a good lesson if the students could explain the lines' significance. I still think that is true, but I'd now like to acknowledge the value of recitation as an effective way of improving oral fluency and its connection to comprehension. There is a level of intimacy with a piece of literature that comes with learning to express the words well verbally. To memorize we have to read over and over and over again. This is actually a reading comprehension strategy or "habit of mind" that we all have as advanced readers. We reread to properly internalize what we have just read. When combined with discussion of the the text's meaning, I think this sort of recitation activity could be quite effective at improving holistic literacy.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Petra. I think that this video was great to students engaged in the material. While they might have not have understood what the words meant before, simply memorizing it and then performing it would get them to understand the text much more. Memorizing lines from a text is also important for the regents exam because citing a quote from a text is an important support for any of the essays they would need to write on the English Regents exam. This is a reading comprehension strategy as Nina said.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Petra's comment and know that memorization does have a place in ELA as it can have a positive effect on the student's fluency as well as help the student to become a more effective speaker.
ReplyDeleteReading Sharmin's comment also made me think about the ELA Regents Exam and how memorizing these lines will help them. The students will have the confidence to answer questions based upon shakespeare because they have worked with and interpreted his material.
This video features a large number of people reciting lines from the same soliloquy, so it is hard to make a blanket judgement about comprehension here. Some of the students conveyed true engagement with the dramatic material and phrased the words in a fluent and expressive way. I would argue that the act of delivering the lines with expressive fluency demonstrates a high degree of comprehension. Others phrased their lines somewhat awkwardly,which suggests that the antiquated vocabulary and grammatical structures obscured their comprehension of the material.
ReplyDeleteAfter the postings, I am noticing a very intriguing dialogue on memorization and its role in the world of ELA/Balanced literacy. I would argue that memorization is a useful tool in being able to establish oral fluency especially if the text is as dense as Shakespearse but I would encourage you all to look at the video and just look at the faces of these students. They are completely CONNECTED to the text and for me as a teacher this is so much, much more significant then what method, framework, theoretical approach, or strategy is established on the text. These students are vividly living these words and taking ownership on their own interpretation of the text. This is how you can transform a students life and outcome by allowing them to become their own agents of change.
ReplyDeleteI really like this video. I was one of the students that found Shakespeare a bit dry and hard to comprehend. Even if the students didn't specifically define every word of the play or even understand, I'm sure they have to be thinking about the words they are saying at some point. Repetition may be a way for them to comprehend the text in a non-traditional way.
ReplyDeleteVery cool idea that I may try to incorporate into my classroom!