I am SO excited about this. I've already seen a couple of things I'm going to borrow (the setting, character analysis, and vocabulary building lesson ideas) and I also thought about using a slide show to generate interest in reading, researching and reporting/presenting on various topics. I saw a really cool slide show on Botswana (mostly a wide variety of animals).
We could watch the slide show as a class, brainstorm questions about what we see, and students would have a large selection of topics as well as specific information to obtain for their presentations. By limiting each subject to only one or two students, neither the students (or myself) would have to listen to 10 presentations about elephants. In addition, the students would be more attentive and could have a little friendly competition for who could be the most interesting/best informed "teacher" on their subject.
Since my students are often VERY reluctant readers and writers, generating interest and motivation is critical. One way to do this would be to help them get the most benefit from their efforts by coordinating with other teachers. As an example, the reading and note taking could be done (at least partially) during SSR time (while I work with other reading students). If they can save their notes/graphic organizers (via Inspiration 8, Google Docs, etc.) to a flash drive or their student blogs, and I coordinate with the English teacher, the writing could be part of their classwork. The finished products (brochures, power points, etc.) would be included as grades in both classes, yet both teachers would be able to focus and assist more on the objectives for their subject. If science and social studies teachers would keep the reading teacher informed, this arrangement could be expanded to assist them as well. Talk about teamwork ! I think this would be a great way to differentiate--whether to provide more support & time for a basic student or to allow a gifted student an independent learning project.
Although the photographs I downloaded were from The Sistine Chapel in Rome (we missed seeing it while there years ago--still bugs me to this day), I am also attaching the link to the Botswana slide show.
With reference to the photo's--where should we store them ? I wasn't sure, because of space issues, if it would be OK to keep in a folder on my school computer so I put them on my flash drive.
This is from darthdowney on Flickr.
The URL for the slide show :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/botswana/interesting/
This was what I got by clicking on the Most Interesting link of David Jakes Classroom Uses of Flicker link in Part 3 of Thing #9. There were numerous contributors of photographs included in the slide show. I have no idea how (or whether further is necessary ?) to cite this.
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