Laurie had a brilliant idea to share stories around between the schools we teach in. So jen – as in jGR – in Vermont is going to send a reading created from a story to Laurie in NY and Laurie’s class will add some details and send it back to Jen.
I am calling these Shared Readings, but as soon as Laurie comes up with a better name (it is her idea!) we can call it whatever she wants.
By the way, I generally stay away from new ideas unless they are monster ideas, and that for the simple reason that too many ideas can sink a CI ship fast. Been there done that. Now I have a very simple weekly design and want to keep it that way.
But this idea is just too good. Below is the thread from today where this idea took its present nascent form:
Laurie to Jen:
Type up a story that they have done in class and email it to me and I’ll read it with my kids. We’ll add some details and mail it back….it will give them a purpose that they can see and enjoy. What do you think?
Then Jody, the San Francisco Sage, said:
Thumbs up on this idea, Laurie! ¡Genial (as we say in español)!
Then I said:
That’s a pretty powerful idea Laurie. Wow.
Then jen said:
YAY! That will be fun! Another superdeluxe jumbo can of whoop ass!!! Can you send me your email address? I think this will help me (and students) to learn the fine art of creating embedded readings, right? Isn’t that what this process is? This will show up in their writing down the line I betcha.
Thank you!
Then Laurie said:
Here is my school email: lclarcq@mwcsd.org My thought is not to put pressure on the kids to create a good class story. Let the stories come. When you get one that has a good base, type it up and send it along. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t even have to be interesting!! It just needs to make sense to kids who haven’t seen it acted out.
Lori F. then said:
This is a powerful idea! I’ve told my students about this blog and how I get my ideas from it – if there was a way I could be in on this story-sharing, I’d love it! I teach Spanish II students, but they are really more like Spanish I since they had projects/grammar all of last year. So, not to be presumptuous, but my school email (I’m from Indiana) is: lori.fiechter@acjettech.net
Then I said:
We need someone to organize this. I vote not me. But Laurie is not going to be too pleased if she gets like 25 stories in the next few weeks. Somehow we need to have people get in pairs for this emailing of stories back and forth, anybody who wants to do this. It’s another reason for bios so we can know what language is involved. How do we do this, or should we just kind of set up shared readings (Shared Readings) as a category and work from there?
If we can get these things going, it will add a lot for our instruction. Laurie this is genius. To casually announce tothe kids that a story that you just created together and is now in the form of a reading is going to be sent to a class in another state and you will expect a reading back with embedded material from that class for them to read is just a very cool idea.
I’ll go set up the category. We can work out the details later.