Lesson five: Final Oral Report

National Educational Technology Standards

   3. Technology productivity tools

   4. Technology communications tools

        5. Use technology tools for individual and collaborative writing, communication, and publishing activities to create knowledge products for audiences inside and outside the classroom.

Objectives:

   -Students will be able to recite a memorized speech in a given amount of time (45-75 seconds).

Materials:

   -Digital Video Camera

   -Computer

   -Microphone

   -Students' chosen book (optional)

    -LCD projector and screen

Purpose:

   -Students have learned much about oral reports during the weeks in which this project took place.  This lesson is designed to let students "show off" how much they have learned about their book and about giving memorized oral reports.

Anticipatory Set:

   -Teacher will review the equipment with students.

Check for Understanding:

   -The teacher will ask specific questions about the oral book report after the student has given his or her speech.

Modeling:

   -*Will not occur because students already know what to do in front of the camera. *

Guided Practice:

   -Students are given a few extra minutes to go over their speech.

Independent Practice:

    -Students give their speech in front of the camera.

Closure:

    -Students will watch everyone's speech on the LCD projector.  (The entire class could not watch the filming of each student because our class size is too large and the room we were filming in could not hold thirty-plus people.  Therefore, after filming was completed, we came together in the computer lab and watched the speeches.)

Reflection:

            I thought most students did a good job on the project.  The goal was to improve the students' ability to focus on the main idea of a reading passage and to stick to a main idea when writing.  The time limit of the book review caused most students to focus on identifying the main idea of their book without including a lot of details.  Most students were successful in finding the main idea of their book, some were not. 

            The most interesting aspect of the project was the video rough copy and the students reactions to seeing their own performance.  Most students came away with several ideas for improvements for their final presentations.  I would have liked the students to focus more on using the rubric for this aspect, but it was a struggle to get the students to utilize the rubric at any stage of the project.  In this MiTTEN project, the students mainly focused on how they looked and sounded for the camera instead of the content of their review.  The teacher had to point out many of the content areas of the review.  Many students who had a very good written final copy of their review were not able to memorize it for their oral review and ended up short of the minimum time limit.  In the future I may allow students to create and use cue cards for their rough and final video reviews.