ECI546


 * [[image:stranger.jpg]] || In ECI 546: New Literacies and Media I decided to further develop my essential question by looking into how a new technology, Voicethread, increased reading comprehension as well as each students' ability to think more critically. Also, I wanted to create a project that would give the students the opportunity to ask some higher level questions, so they could understand the text beyond the literal level. Using my knowledge of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy I created a Voicethread for my fourth grade class based on the story titled __The Stranger__ by Chris Van Allsburg. Before I created this project, I was frustrated because my students were expected to understand a story on a fourth grade reading level, yet many of them were reading on a first or second grade level. Many times this population of students were given a separate assignment to complete while the remainder of the class worked on grade appropriate curriculum. Even though the students were less frustrated by this work, because it was on their level, I could see the look of fear on their faces that their peers would notice that they were working on "easier" work. As a result, I decided to use this class to develop a project where these students could also participate with the fourth grade text, because everyone was listening to it. This way, even though these students could not read the text, they did not stand out among their peers, because everyone was listening to the words rather than trying to decode them. Also, this assignment was appropriate for my students who were working on grade level, because the questions throughout the Voicethread were differentiated according to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.

__**Research Question**__: How can Voicethread improve reading comprehension as well as increase each student's ability to ask higher level questions?
Click below to view my research paper that answered this question as part of the Inquiry Learning Process:

View the video below to watch my fourth grade class working on their Voicethread assignments. Also, you will see some of the conclusions I drew about this project throughout the video. [|ILP video] ||  ||