Check out my voicethread on my amazing canine companions!
VoiceThreads would be beneficial for my students in a number of ways. First, having pictures motivates students to write because they don’t have to think of their own topic. It’s already there for them. Students could either bring in a picture of a favorite memory, and then they write the story behind the picture, or they could look at other pictures (perhaps one from history like “The Spirit of ’76” or “Washington Crossing the Delaware”.) Then they could tell their own interpretation of the story, possibly told from the point of view of someone in the picture, or create a fictionalized story based on the picture. VoiceThreads could also be used for promoting the questioning strategy as a pre-writing activity. Perhaps, another student looks at your picture and asks you 3 questions they want to know about the memory you have of that event.
In the area of reading, pictures are really helpful when predicting what a story is going to be about or what we are going to learn on a particular day. They could be used for summarizing a memory of an event, and they could be used for painting a picture of a story in your mind. It will also help students with their reading fluency because they will need to practice reading their writing aloud several times before doing the VoiceThread. The evaluation strategy can be used because students can state their opinion on a topic, and the clarification strategy can be used by the audience to ask questions about parts they don’t understand.
In the acquisition of a second language, I could see this being used so that second language learners could hear a phrase or sentence being read by the teacher, and the students would repeat it. This would allow the students to initially hear it said correctly (as many times as necessary) and give the teacher information about the student’s accent and pronounciation so they know what they need to work on with that student in class.
Whatever strategy this happens to hit upon, it will motivate students to think deeper about an event, allow them to add their own voice to it (which can often be hard to hear when you don’t hear them read it themselves), and students are forced to revise and be concise with their writing since they only have 3 minutes to share their stories.
Professional Musings 
This is such a rich exploration of VoiceThread’s possibilities in the classroom. I especially like how you apply the composition process to specific reading strategies, in that students can deepen their ability to evaluate texts through asking each other questions about the images. The resources you share are also helpful. Thanks.
Great ideas!
When reading your blog a thought came to mind – Would you ever send student work out on voicethread for parents or grandparents to see? It’s a fun idea, but I’m not sure about confidentiality. Is there another digital media that you would use for that purpose?
Hope that this works.
Wow, great idea about using it for second language learners. The more and more I read about peoples’ ideas the more I see how versatile it is. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas to implement it. I would love to hear what you first decided to use and how it goes.
Great Voicethread, Michelle. Thanks for the Voicethread wiki link. Great ideas! I need to play some more with this tool.
[…] Ms. Moore: And the winner of the most professional blog post goes once again to Michelle Shaw for her posting of What strategies will students utilize when participating in a VoiceThread? […]