Collaborative Project with ELL/Special Education teachers/and Graduate Student 

Shadow Puppet/Persuasive Presentations

Together the adults met to discuss how we were going to teach the lesson, use the app Shadow Puppet, and the process involved. We started by using keynote presentation to introduce the project to the students. Carlie (from class) came in to help me with my special education students. I was also fortunate to have a student teacher to assist with making the Shadow Puppet videos. The students were paired with an adult to help them search for pictures and record their report into Shadow Puppet.

My student teacher and I created a Shadow Puppet first so that we could play around with the app and see exactly what we needed to tell the students and show them. It was definitely a must to play around with the app first so that we felt comfortable with it. Before beginning the shadow puppet we first showed ours and told the students that they were going to make something similar using their persuasive reports.

This was how the process began: First students wrote their persuasive essays/paragraphs with support from classroom teachers and us. Students then edited their essays and typed them on the computers. They were then given directions  to highlight 2 or 3 key words for each paragraph. These key words were going to be the pictures that they would be searching for on their Shadow Puppet. Students had a good time searching for pictures, were highly  motivated, and engaged. After finding the pictures they typed in key words onto their pictures that went with their picture/paragraph. When all pictures and writing were complete they were ready to record their voices by reading their persuasive essays. A quiet place was needed to record their choices because it picked up a lot of background noise. I found it frustrating that if a mistake was made while recording they were not able to redo that specific page but they had to go all the way back to the beginning and start over with their recording. After finishing the project, students presented them to their classroom peers. They were excited and proud to present them and it took out some of the jitters of having to stand in front of a large group of their peers. 

This was an easy lesson to adapt and modify for different learners within the classroom. I would like to have students do another Shadow Puppet now that they are familiar with the process and feel more comfortable with it and see if students would be able to do more independently.