Cory Cantrall

“Cutting Edge English” is Cantrall’s winning project that is designed to take the curriculum content to another level by incorporating technology to have students convert a chapter of the book, The Outsiders, into a script, perform the script, videotape the performance and appropriately edit the performance. This will require students at Peet Junior High School to analyze the chapter in great detail and have a strong understanding of each of the roles and components of the story line. The drama and poetry units will also be impacted. In their drama unit, students will analyze their performance, and in the poetry unit, they will enhance their poetry books by adding pictures to be visual representations of the poems. Not only will seventh-grade students benefit, so will eighth and ninth-grade students as they create a documentary about the society in several science-fiction novels. Students in the writing for publications elective English class will be assigned articles to write for the school newspaper, incorporating video highlights to their articles. Because of the ING grant, this project also allows the school newspaper to go strictly online, reducing paper and publication costs while increasing published content and no longer restricting the number of paper publications the school can afford. Cantrall lives in Cedar Falls.