Lesson Plan Reflection

Andrea and I used Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The Raven," to teach the class about different literary devices found in poetry. Since Andrea and I are both huge fans of Poe, our decision to use his most well known poem was an easy one. I always really wanted to use this poem because when my eigth grade English teacher taught this lesson, it was one of my favorite classes I have ever sat through. I also felt that as a teacher, it would be very easy to use this as a starting point for a unit on poetry because branching out to Poe's other poems, and eventually other poets, would be so simple. After a few lessons on poetry, there are certainly some great project ideas I would have my students complete in order to incorprate the different intellegences in my classroom. Overall, I feel that the lesson went well. There was not too much down time for the students to lose focus or get out of hand. Although things went pretty smoothly, there were certainly some issues that could have been resolved. For example, if Andrea and I were to teach this lesson again, I would suggest having a set list of examples at hand when reviewing the definitions of the literary devices. I would also ask the students if they could come up with any examples from popular songs or movies (as long as the choices remain appropriate for a classroom). I really enjoyed teaching this lesson to the class and having Andrea as my partner certainly calmed my nerves. I felt that the two of us worked well together and listened to one another's ideas. I am very excited to being able to plan and teach more lessons in the future!

Digital Story Reflection

I really enjoyed being able to creat this digital story with Andrea. Edgar Allan Poe is my all time favorite author so I was excited to help others learn about his life and the impact his own experiences had on his writing. Andrea and I had a great time while working on this project and could not wait to see how it would come out in the end. This project allowed students who are not very fond of reading information and writing papers learn the required information in an entertaining way. I would certainly use Digital Storytelling in my future classroom! I think it will engage students and allow them to express their ideas in a more creative and fun way!

Digital Story Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTt4YB_7VJY&feature=youtu.be

Hi everyone! I'm so sorry for the delay in posting this link on my blog. I was having internet issues the week it was due, and once that was all fixed, I was having trouble logging into my blog! So once again, I apologize for the delay! Hope you enjoy the video and I hope everyone had a nice break!

End of Day 2

Andrea and I made a lot of progress on our story today. We finished collecting the information about Poe and came up with some really great ideas to make the story more interesting. Over the next couple of days, Andrea and I need to meet up to film the clips for our digital story. We are also going to need to put the actual story together. Hopefully over the weekend, we will be able to meet up and film our clips to have them ready for next Friday. We're hoping to make our Digital Story interesting and funny in order to help our students become interested and excited to learn about the details of Poe's life that inspired some of his best works.

Digital Story Day 2

Last week Andrea and I set up our basic outline for our story. We found a lot of information about Poe's life and wrote it all down. Since last week, Andrea and I have discussed the possible layout and design of our story. We plan to incorporate as many pictures of Poe, and inages related to his life and work, as we can find. We also plan to use quotes from his poetry and fiction which seem to be inspired from events in his life. Today, I hope to begin putting our story together and incororating a few of the quotes and pictures, and if possible, even some of the auido.

End of Day 1

Today Andrea and I started to write down biographical information on Poe. We covered his early life and his military career. We also began to discuss the early stages of his literary career. Andrea and I basically made a list of all the information we found so far. We will begin to put the Digital Story together very soon. Being a huge fan of Poe, I am very excited to begin this project. I am also very excited to learn how to use Photo Sotry. Digital Storytelling seems like a great way to incorporate techonology into a classroom, and it also allows for students to express their ideas and what they have learned about a topic in a more creative way than just writing a paper. I am very excited to continue working on this story with Andrea!

Digital Story Day 1

I have not yet began to read the textbook on Digital Storytelling. I did, however, flip through the textbook briefly to get a few ideas for the set up of my Digital Story. Andrea and I have decided to make a biography of Edgar Allan Poe for our story. In our story, we will discuss a few main events in Poe's life, which ultimately affected his writings. We also plan to incorprate certain lines from Poe's poetry and ficiton in order to highlight the direct relationship between his life experiences and the troubles the characters in his literature experience.