Toad-ally Exceptional Learners: Talking Tom

January 25, 2013

For the last couple of weeks my sixth graders have been learning to persuade an audience. A favorite topic for all of them in the past has been the environment. Using that idea and a comment one student made about the James Cameron's dive last March. So, off we went for two weeks of reading about deep sea diving, ship wrecks, and seeing it was good or bad. The problem--how to get them to present the work without taking TONS of time. (Which I don't have in interventions.) One student in the group noticed that I had put Talking Tom on the iPads and became asking and asking and asking if they could do something with it.

Talking Tom and his Friends (which are free) are easy to use and allow them to create and apply the knowledge that they got from reading. If you area not familiar with all the silly things that Tom can do, make sure you plan extra time for students to just play before getting down to work.

Before getting out the iPads students had to create their script and make sure they had meet all the requirements on the rubric. Then I get to read through it and make sure its short and sweet. Talking Tom only gives you 30 seconds to record.

I have another group that used Talking Tom to write a script that had to contain as many VCE words as they could get in and have it make sense. This was not as challenging for them as I thought it would be for them. But we had great fun. They turned out great with more to come. Enjoy!!