Using Voice Thread to Prepare for "The Odyssey" Common Assessment

My last post was a little harsh on the tech side of things, so now I'll try to make up for it.  My grade 9 students are preparing for a common assessment on The Odyssey where they are required to annotate an unseen passage from The Odyssey and write a mini commentary on the given passage.


The directions for the assessment are as follows:


Read and annotate the passage below.  Next, you will turn your annotations into 3-paragraph response.  Remember the basic structure required:


Paragraph 1: State author, name of text, where it comes from. Brief setting up of context. A clear THESIS statement that addresses the 1-2 dominant literary devices you will be commenting on, and how they link to/develop a THEME or MOTIF of mythology.


Paragraph 2: Noting the literary devices and their EFFECT (the “So What?” factor)


Paragraph 3: Tell why this passage is significant (important) to the overall text.


To better prepare my students for the assessment, I have created a VoiceThread for them to practice with in class early next week.  It is attached here: http://voicethread.com/share/676684/.  Feel free to give me some pointers on how to make this better or attempt to annotate the passages yourself.  It will be great for my students to see the insight of others outside their classroom.