Sketch+Journals

=Character Sketch Journals=

What the Literature Says?
There are so many ways to build readers' confidence and voice to engage student readers. The two chapters from Kajder,, S. (2010). Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning Alongside Our Students. Urbana, IL: NCTE, provide many ideas for matching pedagogies with new technology tools. According to the NCTE policy research brief on adolescent literacy, it is a myth that literacy refers only to reading, and in fact encompasses, "reading, writing, and a variety of social and intellectual practices that call upon the voice as well as the eye and the hand" In constructing multimodal texts that include student voice, vision and narrative, students are creating literacy projects that push students to think more deeply about their reading, often seeing experience through the eyes of a character. As Peggy Albers states (Albers, P. (2010). Literacies, the Arts, & Multimodality. Urbana, IL: NCTE.) ..."visual representations enable us to understand our students' interpretation of character as expressed through art, language and music. Further, their writing becomes richer with detail because they attend to the story, the music, and the art, all of which help them imagine and interpret the story in more complex ways" (56). By sharing and evaluating images and posts, students learn to use participatory media to create meaningful work related to the literature under study.

Read the following chapters from the Kajder text:
 * 1) Chapter Five - Reading and Writing Multimodal texts
 * 2) Chapter Six - Writing Together: Participatory Media, Collaboration, and the English Classroom

Questions to consider:
How do digital Character Sketch Journals help students summarize the text from a character’s perspective? How else might you use VoiceThreads in an adolescent literature classroom?

Mary's Thoughts
Sketch journaling uses the juxtaposition of image and text to interpret scenes, characters, portray themes, and express a personal understanding of the literature. Though good teachers have always provided opportunities for students to draw out visual understandings, the digital tools discussed within these chapters, allow students to create, share, and discuss ideas and issues raised in verbal/visual ways. Sketch journaling is an important way for students to visualize, narrate, question, create extended metaphors, write about connections to life and stimulate ideas for multimodal writing. By recasting the sketch journal a sa multimodal response/review of the book, through one character's eyes. students not only create or find corresponding images as connected to a character's experience, but they record narration to uncover the character's inner thoughts and feelings. See my example of a character journal through the eyes of the character Jonas in Lois Lowry's, **The Giver.**

[|VoiceThread] [|"How to" resource] [|VoiceThread digital library]
 * 1) Where to go for more information on using technology VoiceThreads (found on p. 84) in Kajder:
 * A teacher compiled list of classroom VoiceThreads
 * =====Matthew McMillan's graphic novel as storytelling- [|The Kepesita Expedition]=====
 * The Kepesita expedition is a graphic novel travelogue, telling the story of Peter Varga and his attempt to hitchhike around the world. Mathew is creating sketches for this travelogue. The motto of this expedition is **"Let the World Change You"**

Technology Knowledge
There are many ways to build a character sketch journal. Here is some guidance on one method 1. Creating Your VoiceThread: See VoiceThread links above.

2. Finding your Creative Commons images

media type="youtube" key="_Yr5U6zDycY" height="344" width="425"

2. My Character Sketch Journal on __The Giver__ media type="custom" key="11428722" 3. Please note that in the thematic braidings activity I noticed that many of you did not source the images you used. I am guilty of this as well. Please remember on your character sketch journal, let's start fresh and credit the location / author of your chosen images. Notice that I have created a credit slide at the end of my journal. I also have embedded links within each slide, using the title of the slide prompt ,where I embedded a link to the flickr site.

Assignment
5 Day Digital Character sketch Journal You will build a digital character sketch journal using the technology, VoiceThreads. In your journal, you will find and capture scenes as you read five chapters of your book. You will portray with your voice, your understanding of the chapters from the perspective of one of the main characters in the novel. You will create a narrative script using the voice of your chosen character, re-telling the experiences recounted in the book. This is a creative writing assignment. Do not use the word in the book, but create your own script to correspond with imagery and your vocal narrative. Your character journal will have a title page, identifying the novel and the character you are choosing to represent. Each succeeding slide (5, representing chapters or major successive scenes) will be portrayed using a copyright free image (found on Creative Commons), and an audio narrative. Post your response as a link in the "Our Digital Work" space on the WIki.

Assessment

 * [[file:Character Sketch Journal Rubric.pdf|CHaracter Sketch Journal Rubric]]**