After a couple of weeks of practice, it was time for our class Poetry Out Loud competition. Students were chosen at random using Class Dojo. This is a free online webtool that allows teachers to input all of his or her students and assign an avatar to each. This can be used to give points for things like participating, but it also has an option to click "random" where it spins a wheel at the bottom and selects a truly random student. This is a great upgrade on the tried and true popsicle stick method of choosing random students. It even allows you to assign negative points for behaviors that you would like to stop. Students and parents each have their own site they can access from home to track points.
As each student recited his or her poem, the class used CPS clickers to give the student a rating of 1 (very weak) to 9 (Outstanding). Overall, the classes scores were very close to the scores I had already given the students. They thought this was fun, and it certainly broke up the usual humdrum of listening to oral presentations for an entire class period. In the end, students with the highest scores were assigned numbers and the class voted on a winner. We were able to see instantly the number of votes for each student, making the process of choosing a winner quick and easy.
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