Comparing oral fluency at ages 4 and 5, discussing sausage ball cooking

As we did last year, my daughter Rachel and I made some sausage balls tonight for an upcoming holiday party. We recorded another VoiceThread, and she described the steps and process involved in making sausage balls. I particularly like photo number four, when she describes “getting a snitch!. We used my iPhone to snap these photos, and a M-Audio USB Producer microphone to record the narration for this VoiceThread.

We actually found this recipe again by reading last year’s blog post about sausage ball cooking! It is fun to compare how Rachel’s voice and vocabulary have grown in the past year, using these two VoiceThreads. Unlike last year, Rachel needed very little prompting to narrate each of these slides. We did re-record several times, when she repeated statements like “it’s so fun” or “it’s so cool,” and I encouraged her to elaborate specifically on the picture and what is happening in it.

Of course this was just a fun activity to do together and share, and not for a class assignment, but I do think it powerfully demonstrates how even young children can begin creating a comparative portfolio of work which reflects their literacy and communication skills in very transparent ways. The tools are here. “Regular accounts” on VoiceThread.com remain free for K-12 educators. Ed.VoiceThread.com is available for small fees and permits students to have their own accounts, publishing within a VoiceThread “walled garden” environment. If you’re having trouble viewing VoiceThreads at school because of firewall or content filtering issues, share this VoiceThread blog post with your IT gurus.

Technorati Tags:
cooking, cook, holiday, sausage, balls, assessment, literacy, communication, voicethread

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