Last week saw the end of my Grad 9 applied unit themed “lost worlds.” I will miss the talk about myth, legend, and historical fiction. I will miss the ghosts of Beowulf, Arthur, and Caesar haunting Room 203.
Of the many highlights, the one that will likely stay with me for a while will be the audio tracks that students created from scenes from Julius Caesar. In self-created groups of five or less, students used Audacity to record their dramatic reading (with sound effects) of a scene assigned to them. They had to choose a genre to create the reading.
Some of the interesting scenes included:
- Calpurnia’s plea to keep Caesar from the Capitol in a Star Wars genre
- the conspirators with Brutus in a mafia genre
- the murder scene in a Transformers genre
Students practiced in class several times before we moved to the lab for recording (this took about three classes to complete.)
What worked well:
- Students had fun listening to their own production — almost too much fun, as it was sometimes hard to encourage them to move on to the next few lines.
- By creating their own audio recordings, students learned a lot about sound effects and how they add to a story’s interpretation.
- Audacity is getting easier for me to use all of the time. Next time I’m sure I’ll be able to get students started sooner and using it easily.
What needs work:
- Time, time, time. Audacity was a new program for them, and it took students a long time just to learn the software. I’m glad that they’ve had the experience, but when I think of the time that it took to do that and then look at all of the curriculum expectations that need to be met before June, I wonder about the time investment.
But even so, I think it was worth the time required. I think I’ll use this again in the future.
