Day 1:

Book Read: Stone Soup   By: Marcia Brown
Technology Used: toondoo.com
Assignment: After reading the book, the students were to identify three of the main events. After these were chosen, they were told to go to toondo.com and represent these three main events in a comic strip. 
NCSCOS Objectives: 
-2.02 Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, and viewing by:
making predictions.
- 2.03 Read a variety of texts, such as:
fiction (tall tales, myths).
-2.09 Listen actively and critically by:
asking questions.
-4.10 Use technology as a tool to enhance and/or publish a product.


My Observations:
    On the day that I began my project, I told my SBTE that I wanted to work with three reluctant readers in her classroom. She immediately suggested three boys for me to work with. Initially, I began with telling them that I was going to be pulling them out once a week for reading instruction. All three of them instantly groaned as if the thought of reading was the most awful thing in the world. Once I told them that we would be working on the computers though, they became a little bit more interested. 
    To start out, we took a look at the cover of the book, and I asked the boys to make some predictions for what might happen in this story. (At this point only one of the boys was willing to say anything. The other two still seemed disinterested.) Once we had discussed his predictions, we moved on to talk about how we know what the main events of the story are. As we talked more about this, all three of the students began to slowly join in as well. I told them that while I was reading the story aloud to them, they should be thinking about what they thought the three most important events were. As I read, one of the students became extremely engaged. He asked a question on nearly every page, and they usually took the form of "I wonder if....." After I had finished reading the book, we discussed it for a few minutes and then I asked for someone to tell me what they thought the three main events were. After we agreed on these events as a group, I discussed the assignment with the students. I told them that they were to get on the computers and go to toondoo.com where they would create a comic strip displaying the three main events from the story. At the mention of creating a comic, all three of the boys suddenly got really excited. They all quickly logged on to this website and got started. From the minute that they started working on this project to the time that they finished, their motivation remained extremely high. All of the boys seemed to really enjoy getting to make their own designs, and they even wanted to print out extra copies to show their teachers. For their first time working with me, I thought that they did a good job. I could tell that their motivation had increased a good deal by the end of lesson, and they even asked when the next time I would work with them would me. I was already seeing improvements.