Chapter Chat is a kind of on-line book group. We all read set chapters of a book (the book this time is Charlotte's Web), log into Twitter on Friday mornings and tweet responses to a set series of questions about what we have read. There is also the opportunity to create/make something relevant to the learning, eg last week it was to create a model or draw a picture of Zuckerman's barn (from the story).
We emailed the parents during the holidays, asking if they would, if possible, access a copy of Charlotte's Web for their child. We also accessed some through the school.
In Week 1 we read Chapters 1-4 and, come Friday, Carolyn had set us up with the Twitter profile and we were on-line madly discussing ideas and thoughts about the questions and tweeting them to other learners across New Zealand, who had all read the same chapters as us. We used the activeboard for viewing and gave whole-class responses, after discussion.
The children were absolutely buzzed by the experience. It is very powerful to have all the children engaging in the same text, contributing ideas and responding to text, both less fluent and more fluent readers. There is the opportunity for lots of talking, no need for lots of writing (although you could if you wanted to) and there are open-ended follow up tasks using a choice of platforms.
As you can see, I am very excited about this new (to me, anyway) literacy initiative and I can see children engaging with enthusiasm, for example, using minecraft to create follow-up tasks. I feel it is a way of making literature available to all learners, including those who would be unable to decode the text independently with any degree of fluency.
I'm very pleased we got underway with this initiative and am very keen to continue with it!
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| Here's the lovely Ti Kouka learners with their copies of Charlotte's Web |
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