5B Novel Study: The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

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5B Novel Study: The Incredible Journey


5B has just completed a novel study using the VoiceThread multimedia tool. The visual component of this VoiceThread project has allowed grade five students to showcase comprehensive volcabulary words, setting/locations and core characters from their novel study captured in a free tool called Wordle. This online tool is becoming increasingly popular in education because its versatility across all subject areas. Wordle creates ‘word clouds’ or a visual display using text.

During the reading of the novel, each student was responsible for creating a Microsoft Word document listing important vocabulary words, significant locations and main character names for each chapter. After the novel was finished, students copied and pasted their assigned chapter list into Wordle and a word cloud was created. Wordle gives users the artistic freedom to customize their image by choosing:
• foreground and background colour schemes
• horizontal/vertical layout of the words
• font style

Once Wordle images were uploaded into Voicethread, students recorded their chapter highlights through the use of an external microphone.

Ms. Tonhauser

5B has just completed technology enhanced project combining Wordle, language arts writing, summarizing skills and their recorded voices. Our VoiceThread focuses on the thrill seeking novel, The Incredible Journey that we read together as a class. Each student was assigned a partner and with that partner they were asked to summarize a chapter of the novel into eight main events. They also had to choose twenty interesting and important words found within the chapter for the wordle they created. We are lucky to also have some very talented artists in our class who recreated a beautiful cover for our project. Many students commented that it was an exact replica of the original on the cover of the book! The students were thrilled to see their finished work on display for the entire world to view! They had a fantastic time working collaboratively and creating their own summaries for The Incredible Journey.

We hope you enjoy our VoiceThread!
Mrs. Berube