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Teacher Resources by Grade
|1st - 2nd||3rd - 4th|
|5th - 6th||7th - 8th|
|9th - 10th||11th - 12th|
Recording Readers Theatre: Developing Comprehension and Fluency With Audio Texts
|Grades||9 – 12|
|Lesson Plan Type||Standard Lesson|
|Estimated Time||Six 60-minute sessions|
MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
- Computers with Internet access and speakers
- Speakers, microphones, and headphones
- Digital voice recording software such as Audacity or GarageBand
Grades 6 – 12 | Student Interactive | Writing & Publishing Prose
The Mystery Cube helps students identify and summarize story elements in this popular genre. It can be used as a postreading or prewriting activity.
Grades 3 – 12 | Student Interactive | Organizing & Summarizing
The interactive Cube Creator helps students identify and summarize key elements. It can be used as a prewriting or postreading activity.
- Before, During, and After Listening
- Sound Effects Practice
- Evaluating the Audio
- Readers Theatre Self-Evaluation
- Working With My Group form
- Aaron Shepard’s RT Page
- “The Purloined Letter”
- Tech-Ease: Podcasting Video Tutorials
- Tech-Ease: Podcasting With Audacity Video Tutorials
- Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and the Unreliable Biographers
- The Poe Museum
- Poe’s “The Raven” Was Published in 1845
|1.||If you are not familiar with the Guided Comprehension strategy, you may want to review Chapter 1 of Guided comprehension: A teaching model for grades 3–8 by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen. Your goal in reviewing this strategy is to help students interact with text. The three main stages in Guided Comprehension include:
|2.||Familiarize yourself with the Readers Theatre strategy by accessing Aaron Shepard's RT Page. If your students are unfamiliar with this strategy, you might teach A High-Interest Novel Helps Struggling Readers Confront Bullying in Schools before beginning this lesson.
|3.||This lesson plan uses an audio file of Edgar Allan Poe's story "Purloined Letter" but you may choose a different mystery or horror story based on the needs and abilities of your students. Additional online sources for audio books and stories include:
|4.||Visit and familiarize yourself with the interactive, online Mystery Cube. This tool helps students identify mystery elements, practice using vocabulary from this genre, and sort and summarize information. Specific prompts ask students to describe the setting, clues, crime or mystery, victim, detective, and solution. The tool also includes a planning sheet designed for students to use before they actually get on the computer. Bookmark this tool on the computers students will be using.
|5.||If you will be using stories by Edgar Allan Poe, visit the sites listed in the Resources section for information about his life and work. You may want to bookmark some of the resources you find for your students to use. Print off and make a copy of "The Purloined Letter" for each student in your class.
|6.||Arrange to use a computer with Internet access and speakers during Session 1. Reserve three or four sessions in your school's computer lab (see Sessions 3 through 6). Your students will be creating and editing podcasts, so you may want to schedule additional time in the computer lab as well. If you are not familiar with how to create and edit podcasts, consult with your school's media specialist and check out the following online resources:
|7.||Print and make a copy of the Before, During, and After Listening and Sound Effects Practice sheets for each student in your class. You will also need to make two copies of the Evaluating the Audio sheet for every four students in your class (groups of four use this sheet to evaluate two other groups' work).|