SPeaking & Listening
Smarter Balanced Assessment Claim: Speaking & Listening
Students can employ effective speaking and listening skills for a range of purposes and audiences.
Students can employ effective speaking and listening skills for a range of purposes and audiences.
Pair Music & Literature
Pairing Contemporary Music with Canonical Literature
- Sample Assignment - Listen to Howard Hanson's The Lament of Beowulf, Op. 25. Read the accompanying libretto for the piece. A libretto is the text of a dramatic musical work. Consider how well Hanson's piece captures the mood and tone of the original poem.
- Sample Assignment - Create a soundtrack for a text. Pair text to music, and defend your choices.
Listen to speeches
TED Talks and TED Ed: Talks for Education
American Rhetoric: A database of historical and fictional speeches. You can read the transcript or listen to the audio file of most speeches here.
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Create Video
Create videos or trailers to express or reinforce understanding of the tone or themes of a text. These can be made using the video camera on your device, iMovie, Educreations, Explain Everything, etc.
Sample assignments: (I am sharing a few ideas, as well as a few of my own assignments. Please use them as inspiration and adapt them to your own content and ideas, but refrain from copying them completely. I still use them as part of my curriculum.) Please note: When I assign video projects, I always pair it with pre-writing/storyboarding and an explanatory paper for analysis and/or reflection. In my opinion, we must be careful not to let projects like these fall into the "edutainment" category.
Sample assignments: (I am sharing a few ideas, as well as a few of my own assignments. Please use them as inspiration and adapt them to your own content and ideas, but refrain from copying them completely. I still use them as part of my curriculum.) Please note: When I assign video projects, I always pair it with pre-writing/storyboarding and an explanatory paper for analysis and/or reflection. In my opinion, we must be careful not to let projects like these fall into the "edutainment" category.
- Create a common craft style explanation of a concept. I created an assignment called "Grammar: in Plain English." Here is an example video. (No, it's not perfect. We are still learning.)
- Create a book trailer that illustrates your understanding of a text's characters, themes, tone, etc. You can find or create a storyboard template to teach effective design and development.
- Create a music video or image slideshow of a poem or excerpt of text. I required my students to create a video representation of an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet. I modeled this by creating a video of the Prologue. My students also had to write a 1-2 page essay detailing their creative process, artistic choices, and analysis of the section of text that they chose to feature.