Let's Trade Books

Today was an exciting day because we did a book talk and trailer. I learned a lot through this experience because everyone had different ways of approaching these two topics. Before I started to construct my project I first had to pick a book that is related to the topic I taught at Bishop Dunn. The first book I thought of was Super Worm. Super Worm is an engaging book for students because it rhymes and it touched upon the concept of consumers. I've also used this book for another class to do reciprocal teaching. The first step I took for this project was filling out the trade book format. This gave me an idea of what standards and activities that I would conduct with the students. Some of the activities I decided to do with the students is to have them create a food chain and food web with the organisms that are included within the book. This will help them learn the differences between food webs and food chains. Another activity that I would have the students design is having them create another superhero in the book. I will leave the imagination up to to the students, but it must relate to the food web and food chains because that is the main point in this book. After I designed my activities I then had to think of how I would create my book trailer. This book trailer had to be geared toward students and it should make them want to read the book. There so many tools to choose from, therefore, I decided to pick GoAnimate. I've used this tool multiple times and I enjoy making videos off of it. As soon as I opened up Go Animate all of my ideas came spilling out. When I was making this video I laughed a lot. Which means if I was laughing I can only imagine how the students would enjoy this video. After putting all the pieces together I was finally done with the video and it came out perfect. To the right of this blog I posted the final product. Please feel free to watch and enjoy the book trailer. When I was done creating everything it was time to put everything altogether. As a class we presented our projects and how we would fit them into our own classroom. My fellow teacher candidates all did it different ways which was wonderful to see because it kept everyone on their toes. A lot of peers used Animoto for their book trailer because they felt very comfortable with the tool. Everyone did an excellent job with engaging the our class and explaining how it will be implemented in their own classroom. I think this project was a great exercise for us to do because it helped us understand that their are different ways to bring in new tools in the classroom. Also, it gave us an idea of how to use trade books in our own class. It is important to use trade books because it will help students see different connections. I hope to use this technique when I start student teaching and even in the future. Until next time bloggers :)