Sunday, April 26, 2009
Reading Out Loud
There has been an ongoing discussion in our class about reading texts out loud to your students and whether or not you should try and portray the character or not. Well, I was in my 5th grade field placement last Friday and they have been reading the book "Hotel for Dogs" and my Coordinating Teacher asked me if I would read a chapter out loud to them while she got some other stuff done. I said sure but as I got reading I was almost paralyzed because I was so overly conscious of the characters and whether or not I was portraying them right. The Aunt in the story is from New Jersey so as soon as I found this out I got stuck on this "new jersey accent" and could not stop doing it. I asked my CT afterward if I sounded funny and she said "No, but you do a very good New Jersey accent!" I couldn't help but laugh because it is so funny how this class has affected almost every aspect of what I do and what I see now!!
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I noticed this in my placement, too. My CT always reads the Junie B Jones books to the classroom and she uses different accents for the different characters. I think it is alright to use voices to try to depict how you think the characters would sound. From the sounds of your post you did just fine!
ReplyDeleteIts funny that I saw this post today because just today my CT had the students in my fifth grade classroom read Slave Dancer, but she has it read on tape, so she is not actually doing any of the voices, but has actors on the tape do it. I almost think this was worse because the actors over exaggerated EVERYTHING. Their voices were obnoxious and distracting from the text of the book..I did not even listen to what was going on in the story because I was so caught up in the actors funny voices. I think I would have liked it better if my CT read it herself and did her own voices.
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