Part of the Cool Sites series

I developed the Preston Girls’ Secondary College Reading Wiki to show and share with students and teachers how web 2.0 tools can inspire students to respond to set texts in a more creative way.

are just some examples of how students can creatively respond to a book.
Each link explains how the tools can be embedded into the curriculum and shows examples of how other people have used these sites to develop a book response. Some responses are better than others and it would be good to discuss with students beforehand what made certain examples better than others.

For some of the presentations, students may need a Flip camera (such as 60 second recap) however the rest of the presentations could use photos and images from the internet. A lesson on Creative Commons and Wikimedia before students are let loose would help them understand their responsibilities in terms of selecting appropriate images and music to use.

Once finished, students could show their presentations to each other and have them critique their work. Permissions allowing, presentations could also be uploaded to the school website or shown on parent information evenings or parent/teacher nights.

Challenge:

My challenge to you is to ask students to use one of these tools (can be in conjunction with a written response) in their next text response.

Do you think your students would be able to convey their understanding of a text better through a creative response?

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Picture 1Judith Way is a teacher librarian at Preston Girls’ Secondary College in Melbourne, Australia. She is on leave this term to develop a Personal Learning Network program for the State Library of Victoria and the School Library Association of Victoria. Connect with Judith on Twitter, @BrightIdeasBlog. Judith writes the Edublogs award winning Bright Ideas blog on behalf of the School Library Association of Victoria: http://slav.globalteacher.org.au