4th and 5th Graders Tell Stories about "el terremoto" in Chile

My 4th and 5th grade students picked up the beat today on the earthquake in Chile. We told a story in class about the earthquake, watching a CNN student news segment on the event and scouring trending topics on twitter. The class objective was to create a news story that satisfies the questions Quien? (who), Que? (what), Donde? (where), Porque? (why) and Cuando? (when). We came up with the story together, and they will learn the story through TPRS next class period.

Since this comes from 4th and 5th graders, it should be a help to second language learners at a similar comprehension level.

Here are the stories with accompanying word clouds and voki speaking avatars.

4th Grade Class:
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1725526/Terremoto_en_Chile
Voki (fyi, it's me reading on the voki because my students haven't had the chance to add their voices to the project yet.):

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En chile el sábado pasado, fue un terremoto. Casi 708 personas se mataron. La presidente Michelle Bacholet declaró un catástrofe. El terremoto fue mas fuerte que el terremoto en Haiti. Sin embargo, los edificios en Chile se construyen con materiales mas fuerte que los edificios en Haiti. Por eso, habría menos muertes en Chile que en Haiti. Este es el segundo terremoto grande del año 2010.

5th Grade
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1725574/terremoto_5th
Voki:

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Fue un terremoto de magnitúd 8,8 en Concepción, Chile el sábado pasado. Hubo 700 muertes en Chile, y más que 200 milión personas se afectaron. Más que 500,000 casas fueron destruido. La presidente Michelle Bacholet declaró un estado de catástrofe. El terremoto en Chile fue más fuerte que el terremoto en Haiti. Sin embargo, los edificios se construyen con materiales mas fuertes que los edificios en Haiti. El terremoto en Chile era el terremoto más fuerte del año 2010.

As far as mashups or remixes, let me know what you all come up with. It'd be cool to get a group of stories or accounts up in one place for folks to read.

I'm going to create a comic tonight, but I have a few other items to attend to before starting that project. I would love to make a few skype classroom friends as a result of this project. My students also are interested in knowing what they can do to help, so if anyone has any suggestions please put those in the comments too. Mil gracias!

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