First Lesson

Objective:  Students will be able to identify what good readers do when they read aloud.
I asked students to help me identify the reading aloud behaviors of good readers.  This is what they came up with:
1.  Read loudly
2.  Read clearly
3.  Pronounce words well
4.  Use punctuation
5.  Use expression in your voice
We talked about their list and I shared my list with them:
Reading Behaviors:
1.  Phrasing - the ability to read several words together in one breath.
2.  Rate - the speed at which we read.
3.  Intonation/Expression - the emphasis we give to particular words or phrases

Then students paired up with another student and were given the iPad they will share for class use during the school year.  We did a brief overview of how to take care of their iPads, including wiping down the screen before they hand them in to be put away.
The pairs were given a one page story to read called "The Princess Easter."  They read it to themselves first.  Then they used iTalk to record themselves reading about 1/3 of the story, listening while their partners recorded.  Finally they listened to their recordings.  We will keep these as their first recordings.  Students have been instructed to always name their recording with their names and the date.

Okay, then I found out that using the free version of iTalk was not such a good idea.  We couldn't save the recordings because they were too big to e-mail and I needed iTalk Premium to link it to a Dropbox folder.  I went ahead and purchased iTalk Premium using VPP, but it still won't let me upload the first recording the students created with the free version.  Oh, well, at least we'll be able to save all the recordings they do in the future.