Content Area: Language Arts Literacy

 

Index: 3.3B Grade 8 CPI 3

 

Standard: 3.3 Speaking

 

Strand: B - Questioning (Inquiry) and Contributing

 

Cumulative Progress Indicator: 3 - The student will integrate relevant information regarding issues and problems from group discussions and interviews for reports, issues, projects, debates, and oral presentations.

 

Grade: 8

 

Sample Activities:

 

·               Students use a narrative poem, such as “Casey at the Bat,” as the basis for a news report that they write and then broadcast over the school’s P.A. system.

 

·               The teacher reviews New Jersey’s Speaker’s Checklist with students to guide their preparation of a three-minute oral presentation. Students then use the checklist to evaluate classmates as they make their presentations.

 

·               As part of a unit on persuasive thinking, writing, and speaking, students develop a rubric that they will use to rate their own and other students’ speeches. As individual students take turns making a persuasive speech, the audience lists important points concerning content and organization and then rates each speech using the rubric. In small groups, students compare their ratings and reasons for them.

 

·               Middle school students work in pairs to conduct video interviews of each other as part of a local oral history project. Students begin this unit by reading and hearing/observing sample oral history interviews from which the students distill sample generic questions. Prior to taping the actual interview, students practice interviewing one another, using the questions they have generated and familiarizing themselves with media (video or still camera, tape recorders).

 

·               Students read about and discuss proper interviewing techniques. They observe formal interviews on television and then discuss these to determine effective questioning strategies. A set of guidelines is prepared.

 

·               Students develop a list of biographical questions to ask another student in their grade. Each student conducts an interview and then writes a short essay or news report about the interviewee. These are read to the class, omitting the subject’s name, and students guess the subject’s identity.