09.04.20Reading Online with Stephanie Le
I wanted to share this great little video of Stephanie Le’s classroom at Libertas College Prep in Los Angeles. She does a good job of maintaining a dynamic pace to her lesson while keeping students engaged and on their toes through a variety of forms of participation.
The video starts out with her reading aloud with her class. This is an important thing to do in an online classroom- it allows Stephanie to bring the book to life so students are engaged in subsequent discussions and so they can hear what the prose should sound like when they read sections on their own. Notice her really lovely expressive reading and the way she punches words like “torn” to give them extra emphasis. hared discussion of it.
Coming upon the mention of a minor character (but one who will prove important later) she pauses to make sure students are straight on who he is by asking them to answer in the chat. She validates students who got the answer–“MJ, Manuel, you’re right but does anyone remember what happened to Jerry?” This both shows that she values their participation and also pushes them to “stretch it” a bit.
“MJ” gets rewarded with a cold call–“Go ahead and share…”– but still Stephanie wants more detail–“but why though, Guadelupe?” Another Cold Call… the Cold Calling here really enables her to keep the pacing swift. She wants to engage kids and reinforce this key point but not spend too much time on a minor topic.
Stephanie then reinforces that Jerry will become important later and they pick up again with the reading, in this case by asking a student to read.
All in all a great job of keeping high energy and fast pace but also making sure her kiddos are locked in.
