To introduce my students to House on Mango Street, I knew I had to teach them about the book’s format: vignettes.
To do this in a way that would be simple, yet interesting, I created a presentation and set of scaffolded notes that I shared with them via Google Classroom.
The biggest difference between high school and middle school has been my ability to create creative and fun projects, assignments, and presentations. With my What is a Vignette? presentation, I was able to do just that–fun fonts, bring colors, and an interesting visual for my eighth graders!
To make sure my students were involved and engaged, I made a set of scaffolded notes for them to fill in. With my first class, I had them listen, then fill in the notes afterwards. For my two afternoon classes, I had them fill in the notes as we went. I’m not sure what I like better. It seemed like my first class was more vocal and gave me more eye contact during the presentation, but then some were frustrated when they had look back over the presentation to fill in the notes. My afternoon classes seemed to grasp the concepts more, but were more focused on filling the notes than looking at me while I was talking through the slides–ups and downs to both. Either way, I think they now have a solid grasp on what a vignette is, and because I shared this with them, they have constant access to it via Google Classroom so we can always go back over it, if needed.
1 Comment