Building Collaborative Relationships Among Student Teams When Introducing the Reading Apprenticeship Unit in the Co- Taught Classroom Presenters: Kate Hough & Heather Carroll

Introduction We were paired up a week before school started in We have been together every semester for the past two years is our third school year together. We teach 10th grade tech prep and college prep English.

Class Information Fall 2010 We teach two sections of college prep English: Period 1 has 27 students (6 IEPs) and Period 5 has 29 students (9 IEPs) We teach one section of tech prep students: Period 3 has 12 students (5 IEPs)

Classroom Setup New classroom setup this year. Students sit in “tables” of four. Setup changed to encourage more collaborative discussions and work sessions. Research encourages students to work with other students rather than alone. Goal of setup: comfortable learning community

Beginning of the School Year We begin with writing and Reading Apprenticeship (RA) units. Writing instruction serves as a foundation to build upon during the semester. RA unit practices strategies (think alouds and talking to the text) which can be used during the short stories unit.

Sternberg Intelligence Preference The students complete this “test” as part of our first day procedure. Students identify their learning style as either creative, analytical, or practical. We then use these results to create a new seating chart and group students according to their preference.

Introduction Podcast This helps us to get to know our students both personally and academically. This helps student teams to get to know each other. This project fulfills the first component of the Reading Apprenticeship Unit: Personal Reading History

Podcast Procedure We first introduce the project by explaining the process to the students. We show them our examples. We pass out storyboards (script templates) and tell the students to start looking of photos to include with the podcast. (*Students can upload the pictures to Moodle, bring in a flash drive, or bring in actual pictures and take pictures using Photo Booth.)

Library Days The students record their podcast in the library. This allows the librarians to provide Garage Band instruction. It also gives the students plenty of space to record their podcast. They cannot sit next to other students or the mics pick up neighboring voices. Students have plenty of privacy in the library.

Garage Band Students choose a jingle (copyright free background music). They record their scripts (completed BEFORE coming to the library). They search for book sleeves to include with their reading history. They upload personal photos to share information about their families.

Class Wiki Page Each student has an individual page on the Wiki and it will be his or her electronic portfolio for the semester. The students were taught how to upload their completed podcasts to their pages.

Listening to Podcasts The students logged onto the Wiki Page and listened to their pod members’ podcasts. They had to leave comments on each other’s podcasts. They had to leave us feedback on the project itself.