Published: November 18, 2009 10:21 pm      

Teacher makes reading a wonderland

‘Alice’ program brings books to life

A River Valley Middle School teacher will be giving a lesson to teachers from all over the nation this weekend as part of the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention in Philadelphia.

Rose Mouser will be talking about a free teaching tool that gets students involved and interested in reading that she discovered through her former co-workers at Southwestern Middle/Senior High School, in Hanover. Two people there started using a free download of “Alice,” and told Mouser about it.

Alice is a 3-D program that allows students to create an animation for telling a story, according to alice.org. Mouser has used the program for two years, about once each year.

Last year, she said she had many students who didn’t enjoy reading. She said about 40 percent of her students read the book that was assigned during the first semester and were fully engaged in classroom participation.

For the second semester, she showed students this animated program, telling them that if they participated, took good notes and received good grades on their quizzes on their next book, they’d get to make the book come to life on the computer. She had 100 percent participation.

“They were like, ‘Wow!’ and they were so eager to read the novel,” Mouser said. “They read, took great notes … it was the most interactive reading experience I had all year long.”

That kind of success put her, as well as her two former co-workers, on the agenda to teach others how to utilize the program in the classroom. Mouser said the room reserved at the convention will hold 246 people and she’s hoping for a packed house.

“I think the more people who know about it the better,” she said.

As for her group of students this year, Mouser said they are much more interested in reading than her previous group. However, time constraints because of having to teach a number of other lessons as well makes it where she can use this program only once a year. She hasn’t gotten a chance to employ the program yet this year.

“[The students] think it’s neat that they get to do a program that I’m teaching to other teachers,” she said.

Mouser said an added benefit of the program is that it also teaches technological skills to students.