Lower School Literacy

As a classroom teacher, I was always on the hunt for new and exciting ways to entice my less than enthused readers. One of the “hooks” I employed was what they would be doing with the text- and never, never, never would the word “worksheet” be used!

Children often will ask, “Why do I have to do this?” and “When will I ever need to use this?”, and by tapping into their beloved technology I think this next activity will catch their attention.

A quick answer: Youtube. Or another social networking application, but one that viewership can be controlled.

The activity is just a book review, but revamped so that the student is sharing it through a video. They could even then make the review more in depth by including a few acted out skits, to creating interviews with character from the text.

You could then share the links (which you make private, so they aren’t showing up in searches) with the other classmates. As a center activity, the rest of the class would be asked to watch the broadcast, and leave a comment for the reviewer.

This can easily be done outside the classroom as well, and instead of sharing the link with the classmates, you would share the link with family members to make it purposeful.

Happy posting!