Take a look at the lesson that I included the voice threads in, this will give you a better look of what the students learned and how it was taught.
The comparing and contrasting lesson went wonderfully. The students really seemed to be getting the concepts of comparing and contrasting. After reading two different versions of the gingerbread man story and comparing and contrasting the two stories, I had students create their own gingerbread man stories. The students were very excited about doing this and got very creative. After the students wrote their stories they drew a picture to illustrate what they had written. I had always planned for the students to use voice threads for this lesson, but it was hard to find the time to do them.
Today I finally found the time for the students to complete their voice threads. This activity was more of an extension from the previous lesson. The students will always continue to learn and review concepts of comparing and contrasting and this was a great way for students to continue to practice by comparing and contrasting two stories. I had divided the students into pairs, in these pairs students were to first discuss their stories with one another and coming up with a comparison and a contrast of their stories. One student was to say a comparison and the other student was to say a contrast.
To have the students complete their voice threads, I pulled two students at a time and took them to the computer lab. I was able to take them to the computer lab because it was their day to use it. I found that this worked very well, it was quiet and the students were able to talk to one another and record their sentences with no problems. The students really seemed to enjoy doing this and had fun doing it as well. Not all of the second grade students have used voice threads before so it was new to them but they seemed to understand what they were to do and got the hang of it very quickly. I did notice that some of the students were a little more hesitant to talk in the speaker than others. I had told the students that it was just for fun and only the class was going to watch it, once they heard this they felt a little more comfortable.
I also noticed that some of the students felt more comfortable when they wrote their sentence out on a piece of paper and then read what they had written.
I really liked doing the voice threads with the students and felt that they learned a lot by doing this and got a great review on comparing and contrasting. One thing that I was not able to do but had planned to was the color codes, the students did not seem to understand how it worked and the colors would not stay the way we wanted them. They kept changing every time we would go to the next slide. I stopped doing it after the first two groups. I am new to the voice threads as well so I was learning right along with the students.
Take a look at the 2nd graders gingerbread man stories.
