Giving Every Student a Voice

What do you want your students to say?  How do you get it out of them?  In most classrooms across BISD (and beyond), students have a lot to say; but many have a hard time getting it out.  Some are shy and hesitate to raise their hand.  Others may not have the right words but can demonstrate what they know.  So what options are being employed by teachers to let ALL students have a voice?  Dana Washington, fourth grade teacher at Holiday Heights, is using two simple but powerful apps to hear what all of her students know. 

Recently, Washington utilized two digital resources in one of her English/Language Arts classes to hear what her students have to say.  She chose to use ChatterPix Kids to let the kids make a response from the point of view of the gorilla in the novel, The One and Only Ivan.  Students found images of what Ivan might look like and put them into ChatterPix Kids then made their responses.  All students participated and noticed differences in responses as they viewed the finished products.

Washington used Flipgrid to allow students to make video responses about the types of sentences they were studying.  Students created props to use as they were learning about the sentences, and the props were later used in their responses.  When reviewing the submitted responses, students again noticed the differences in how their classmates explained their learning.

All students are engaged, all students sharing their voice.

Please contact your campus DLS if you would like to know more about these and other resources that allow all students to share their voice