Looking for an award winning children’s book to read? Fourth graders in Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Butera’s classes at Okte Elementary School have some suggestions for you. They created podcasts summarizing dozens of Newbery Award winning books. Anyone in the world can listen to their reviews on the web at: www.shenet.org/okte/ok_library/LMC/Pages/4th_Grade_PodCast_Newbery.htm

This project addressed district goals for reading, writing, speaking and listening and required collaboration between the classroom teachers, library media specialist Liz Bailey and computer lab aide Amy Grabkowski. Students benefited from the unique expertise of each team member.
 

Some may say…these kids are only 9 years old…why not just produce a traditional book report? Does using technology really make a difference? The integration of technology serves several purposes. First, it engages students and motivates them to produce high quality work for a worldwide audience. Second, it provides a model for understanding that effective communication and sharing of knowledge is a global responsibility that can be accomplished in age-appropriate ways, even at the elementary school level.

The fourth graders were highly motivated by this project, mostly because they were excited to develop an end product using a new technology, and also because the end result was going to be a spoken piece rather than a written one.  Of course, a written draft was necessary to create a quality end product, but there was emphasis on voice inflection and clarity, which was a new challenge for most of the children. The Newbery podcast project was a great way for them to share quality, award winning children's literature with anyone they wanted, simply by logging on to our website.

		Hatchet by Gary Paulsen Reviewed by ben r.  Mrs. Lee's Class
K. Butera	B. Lee		L Bailey		A. Grabkowski