The Power of a VoiceSubmitted By: Kelly Dowden
My Students: Our students are leaders at Martha Reid! In the classroom we encourage our students to speak up and speak out to contribute to their classroom. Learning is a joint effort, not just conducted by one teacher, but a classroom full of knowledge that comes from each student that is present. Leaders have a voice. A voice that needs to be heard. In a large classroom the students who are loud are heard easily but the students who are quiet need to share their wisdom also.
My Project: I want to give all of my students a chance to hear and be heard. Not hearing the teacher and classmates can lead to low-engagement for students. Distractions outside and inside the classroom add to the fact that elementary students auditory system is not fully developed. I want to take the distractions away by giving everyone a microphone. The QBall is great for the elementary classroom as a mobile microphone. Since it is shaped like a ball and has quiet technology it is made for passing between students and teacher to engage and project voices around the room. The QBall was made specifically for the classroom to include all students in the learning environment and give every student a platform to share their voice. The Qball would support habit number five in our school’s Leader in Me curriculum, emphasizing active listening as a leadership trait. Listening goes beyond hearing, it allows for deeper questioning and understanding. As a classroom community, students “seek first to understand, then be understood”. The Qball will encourage students to physically turn to towards the speaker and provide the ability to hear so they can engage in quality questioning, thinking, and understanding.
My Students Need: My students need a QBall system. It is a microphone system that is encased by a foam ball that can be passed from student to student in the room. Students speak into the ball, sharing their idea, thought, or answer and it is projected across the classroom speakers. It is made to connect to the current audio system in our classroom and has its own wireless frequency to keep the sound localized to the classroom.