Standard #7 – Educators engage in career-long learning.

Extending Readers Theatre: A Powerful and Purposeful Match With Podcasting. By Sheri Vasinda and Julie McLeod.
From The Reading Teacher, Vol. 64, No. 7 (April 2011), page 486 – 497.

Above is an image of a paper I drew inspiration from in my teaching.

One of my favourite things to do is to incorporate my passion for theatre into my classroom. During my research for my practicum I came across an article that described how one teacher took reader’s theatre scripts and recorded them as podcasts. As I read the article I was struck by how doing this in my own classroom would be an excellent way to combine my love of theatre with technology in a meaningful way.

The article describes how a teacher used full readers theatre play scripts to do this with her grade three classroom. However, knowing my students abilities and interests I was nervous about using full play scripts. I was about to abandon the idea all together when I came across Win and Carl Braun’s Readers Theatre for Young Children in the library. This book contains a variety of poems that theatrically tell stories, much like a traditional readers theatre script. Poems seemed to be a much better fit for this particular class and for this particular assignment. Below is a link to the finished podcasts posted on the classroom blog.

Poetry Podcasts by Divisions 3&4 

As a lifelong learner I work hard to find inspiration from a variety of sources for my teaching. In this instance, combining an article from an educational journal with a book I found in the library and the school’s available technology resulted in one of my most meaningful instructional experiences.

I have always been a curious person who actively seeks out learning opportunities wherever and whenever possible. I was excited to see this as a valued standard for educators mandated by the B.C. Teacher Regulation Branch. Throughout my teacher education program I was exposed to a plethora of sources that I can turn to throughout my career when seeking out information and resources. I was also encouraged to seek out and create my own resources. Thus, I have further developed the skills to be a lifelong learner in my personal and professional life.