Friday, May 8, 2009

Audiobooks, Instructional Readers & Shared Books





There are lots of Audiobooks available for download online on iTunes, but rarely the one you want! Harry Potter books are available on the US iTunes site but not on our NZ iTunes (What's up with that?)
But if you have an iPod , a 5 way splitter
Belkin Rockstar
(NZ $20) and cheap headphones (NZ $2.99) then you can create absorbing reading activities for your students.

Record your voice in GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity (Win), upload to iTunes and download to your iPod.

Kids love the iPods and the headphones and this makes for a very 'q-u-i-e-t' activity!

More Ideas
  1. Do you know somebody who has an interesting, expressive voice, ask them to read for you and record them
  2. Record in theatre reading style where you have different voices reading the parts of the characters and narrator
  3. Junior teachers ask teachers of Senior children to get their students to record some of your instructional readers or shared books
  4. More able readers in the class can create audiobooks for less able students
  5. Keep a box of the books/Journals/Instructional readers that you have recorded so that children can choose their favourite story to listen to
Or what about when you can't get to every reading group, record the questions you would normally ask as part of the recording. Students can pause the iPod to look up or find the answers.

2 comments:

  1. The splitter that I bought last week cost $29 but kids love using it.

    I have been scouring iTunes for audio books and it never crossed my little brain that we would record our own as opposed to making a podcast.

    Thanks for planting the seed of an idea.

    Allanah K

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  2. I've tried this, last week I downloaded a whole lot of stories from Story Nory and put them onto our class MP3 player (I have a basic mp3 player that I bought them off Trademe) they love it, it's their favourite reading contract activity. The Rockstar works great with any kind of mp3 player for those of us that aren't lucky enough to have an Ipod available.

    I haven't tried the kids recording their own yet. Maybe next week with my student in the room I'll have time to give it a go :).

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