Day 2:

Book Read: Roberto Clemente   By: Jonah Winter
Technology Used: Online Newspaper Generator
(http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp) 
Assignment: After reading the book, the students were given the following assigment:
-Imagine you are a newspaper reporter on the day that Roberto Clemente died. Write a news article on his death, listing some of his greatest accomplishments. 
NCSCOS Objectives: 
-2.01 Use metacognitive strategies independently and flexibly to monitor comprehension and extend vocabulary (e.g., skim, scan, reread the text, consult other sources, ask for help, summarize, paraphrase, question).
-2.02 Interact with the text before, during, and after reading, listening, and viewing by:
making predictions.
formulating questions.
-4.01 Read aloud grade-appropriate text with fluency, comprehension, expression, and personal style demonstrating an awareness of volume, pace, audience, and purpose.
-4.09 Produce work that follows the conventions of particular genres (e.g., essay, feature story, business letter).
-4.10 Use technology as a tool to enhance and/or publish a product.

My Observations: 
    On my second day of working with these students, I could tell that they were excited before we even began. The first question that they asked me was "Are we going to work on the computers again?" They practically cheered when I told them that yes, we would be using technology again. 
    I began this lesson much like the first one, by asking the students to make predictions about the book and what was going to happen. After listening to their ideas, we started by letting each student alternate with reading aloud one page at a time. During this process, something really exciting happened. Without me getting involved, the students would stop while they were reading to ask questions, talk about what was happening, and summarize what they had just read! I was so proud of them for doing this, especially for doing it without me asking them to. As they were reading I noticed that all three of them stayed engaged throughout the entire book, and they all seemed to enjoy it. This was already dramatically different from the first lesson, where only one of them was engaged throughout. After reading, I told the students that their assignment was to:
 Imagine you are a newspaper reporter on the day that Roberto Clemente died. Write a news article on his death, listing some of his greatest accomplishments.

To do this, they logged on to the computers and went to an online newspaper generator. Here they typed in their stories and it automatically put them into a newspaper format. I was extremely surprised at how hard these boys worked on this assignment, especially since none of them like writing or reading all that much. The students worked for a solid 30 minutes, and even then I had to stop them from writing more. I also really loved that I saw them going back into the text to get some of the main details. When they were finished, they thought that their newspapers were just the coolest things in the world. Again, they asked for their own copies to show their classmates. I was extremely pleased with their performances during this lesson, and I could see that the technology was definitely making a difference for them.