Jackdaw and Glogster Unite!

A What and a What Unite?

Educational Setting/ Grade Level:

In Delaware, students are required to be able to use a plethora of reading skills come the end of their 8th grade year. My Language Arts classroom is an inclusion classroom in which I team teach with a special education teacher for most of the school day. A classroom that is filled with heterogenous mixture of hormonal teenagers is the perfect place to use Glogster! Students of all backgrounds and abilities will have the chance to showcase their reading knowledge, not only through words but by images, video, audio, and graphics as well. Furthermore, inviting students to use technology is the perfect way to capture and engage this group of learners in an activity.

Content Area:

Throughout the school year, my students are required to read a variety of independent reading books within a multitude of genres. After each novel, the students are required to choose one of a variety of projects, asking them to highlight their ability to comprehend, question, analyze, and evaluate the story. Glogster would be the ideal addition to my list of projects.

An assignment often used to have students showcase their understanding of a story is a jackdaw. This interesting task asks students to decorate a brown paper bag with artifacts, symbols, and words that may help describe their reading book. Within the bag, students should include as least 5 artifacts. These artifacts can relate to the characters, the conflict, or even specific scenes. Students should be able to tell the whole story through their bag and artifacts. Taking this tangible idea, and adding some technology to it, learners could make their jackdaw into a Glog. By finding the perfect background and text boxes, students could easily show the theme of the story. Through the use of images and video/audio clips, major events, character personalities, or conflicts could shine through. Students would no longer need to bring in items from their home or surrounding world to represent their book; rather they simply can use one of the best resources out there- the internet.

Technology:

Students could begin completing this task at school on a selected project work day. Each child, per class, would need a computer with internet access to work from during their class period. Students would then need to be given their glogster account information (nickname and password) and they would be all set to go. As students work throughout the class period, they would be able to save their work. When they got home at the end of the day, their project would be easily accessible to them as long as they have access to a computer with internet. As a teacher, I would be able to view the students progress while they work, offering them formative feedback along the way.

Appropriateness:

Using Glogster to make a jackdaw would be the perfect way to have students exhibit what they know. Through the various artifacts, text, video, photographs, and audio that the students include, I could get a sound idea of how well they comprehended the text at hand. The more out of the box artifacts, the deeper the student will have understood, connected to, and analyzed the text. Furthermore, the background and layout of the Glog will easily show me if they understood the theme and feel of the story. It also will allow me to see their internet literacy as to what visual grammar skills they hold. If a student uses white on a light background, has a disorganized layout or an audio sound bite that does not work, they may have a problem navigating these new literacies (Leu et. al, 2004).

Assessment:

When it comes time to assess my students, the following ideas would be included on my rubric:

1. Students summarize their book through the use of at least 5 artifacts.
2. Students analyze and evaluate the text to make deeper connections
3. Students identify the theme of the story in a clear, concise manner.

Since my school follows the ideals of standards-based grading, the above categories would be graded and added to my gradebook. However, I would also like to include on my rubric classifications that focus on the students ability to use new literacies.

1. Students layout their Glog in an appropriate manner in terms of font, color, and presentation
2. Students use more than two electronic features to represent their artifacts that work effectively (Klein, 2010)

Despite the fact that I can not use the following categories in my summative assessment because new literacies are not a part of my standards, giving students formative feedback about their electronic skills will help them to foster their ability to appropriately use the internet, webpages, and technology in the future.