A Poetry Presentation Using VoiceThread

With the end of the school year comes many reasons to celebrate.  In my fifth grade classroom we have an annual Literacy Celebration that allows parents to come in to the classroom and see all the progress their children have made in reading and in writing.  Students take all the published pieces of writing from the year and create their own writing portfolio using a binder and sheet protectors.  Students also write an About the Author page with their picture on it, and put it out on their desk for display along with their portfolio, Poetry Books, Heritage Books, and Civil War projects.  Each student desk looks like the picture below. 

Student work presented at the Literacy Celebration

Picture of Student Poem

As part of the celebration I also have students choose their favorite poem from their Poetry Books and read them to the parents.  Although this is a great way for students to demonstrate their reading and writing skills for the entire audience, I have run into problems with this format in the past.  Sometimes students read too fast or too soft, so their poems aren't heard or understood.  Additionally, this year I have a student who cannot read and therefore would be unable to read his poem.  For these reasons I felt that this was a good opportunity to turn to the help of technology. 

Picture of Student Poem

 I decided that instead of having students read their poems live, I would use VoiceThread to record their readings, and then play the presentation for the parents.  Once students decided which poem to read, I took a picture of each one and then uploaded them to VoiceThread.  I then called students one at a time (after they practiced of course) to recite their poems as I recorded them.  All but two students read their poems perfectly the first time through, and the other 2 were able to perfect it the second time around.  For the student that is unable to read, I said the words quietly in his ear, and then he repeated them.  The end product resulted in a presentation that was uniform, visually pleasing (since the audience could actually see the poems and how they looked on the page), and representative of their best poetry reading.  Please enjoy our Presentation of Poetry.