Tech Bytes - January

This month's blog post is going to take a little different format and flavor from the previous Tech Bytes.

Our county has a fabulous, highly-esteemed program called Pinnacle Leaders Program. The program was begun to identify, nurture and develop teacher technology leaders. Pinnacle leaders are role models for the county, their schools, and colleagues.

Recently, our latest cohort group was tasked with sharing a "favorite thing." Their work includes all components of Tech Bytes from Be in the Know to Cool iPad apps. So without further ado, here are Pinnacle 22's Favorite Things (and my tech byte for January!).

Reader's Workshop & Technology Integration ... Yes It is Possible

You don't need me to point out that literacy is changing. Don't get me wrong, this digital girl still prefers to read books....that are, well, ... actual books. And my idea of reading is not to read to take a test. (Can I get an amen?) To quote The Book Whisperer (Donalyn Miller), "The only thing kids need to be doing during reading workshop is reading books, talking about books, and writing about books." And, oh, the ways technology can help kids do all three.

Reading Books:

First, let's have a balance of reading printed text and digital text. And let's examine the need to always have students read digital text just for research purposes. A terrific digital resource for elementary students is Epic Books. Did I mention it is free for elementary teachers and media specialists? Epic

offers thousands of high-quality children's books and even allows teachers to create a collection for students to read (think digital book box).

So by balance, I'm not just talking about reading printed and digital text, but let them respond to the text both digitally and with print. If they are reading a digital text, let them respond by writing their thinking, their stop and jots. If they are reading a printed text, let them respond digitally, perhaps a #booksnap. And yes, elementary students can do this, we just wouldn't use Snapchat.

Since digital reading requires a different set of skills than reading print, (clarity of words on a screen, hyperlinks, extraneous material on screen, etc) teachers have to model and teach students during mini-lessons how to successfully read digital text.

Talking About Books:

Turn and talk is prevalent in reader's workshop, we ask students to share their thinking about their reading, the action of the story, information about characters, and more. As a teacher, it is impossible to hear each child every single day. Let's harness the power of technology to get students talking about books. Have you tried Flipgrid yet? It's a digital discussion platform easy enough for Pre-K students, but also robust enough for adults. Give it a try with book talks and see what happens.  Build a community that talks about books, recommends books, and gives students an audience for their work. You will be amazed and surprised at the possibilities. Plus it gives you a chance to hear from your students more and adjust instruction to meet their needs.

Writing About Books:

Ever notice how popular Goodreads is? Ever notice how unpopular the reading log is? I have an idea...Let's use a digital tool such as Seesaw to transform the reading log. Students can use Seesaw to take a photo of their book cover, annotate on it, add an audio recording of their personal response, and even upload book trailers from other apps into a "Goodreads" folder. Students can comment and have conversations as they write and talk about the books within Seesaw.

Every tool I mentioned will work on iPads and Chromebooks. Every tool I mentioned is free. If you want help implementing any of these ideas or want to talk about ideas that have sparked in your head, please contact your ITF. We will be happy to help!

Tools to Help Struggling Readers

I'm a reader. I can devour fiction books in hours and nonfiction texts in a day or two at the most. My friends are amazed by my reading abilities. I'm fortunate, a love of reading was instilled early and I have never struggled with reading difficulties.

Some of our students, however, do struggle and the wonder of books are lost because of that struggle. We are a G Suite for Education district, so teachers are always looking for ways to help their readers while using Chromebooks and Google accounts. Below are a few options that may be worth checking out. Let me know what you think and if you have others to add to the list.

Reading:

Newsela

Fluency tutor

Books that grow - paid subscription

Wonderopolis

Epic Books

Closed captioning on Discovery Education Videos

Closed captioning on YouTube Videos

Text to Speech extensions:

Speakit

Announcify - reads aloud websites

Read & Write for Google (free teacher premium account)

Simplify text on screen

Read & Write for Google

Beeline Reader - adds text gradient to help students with tracking

Open Dyslexic Font

Reading Ruler

Audio Books

Librivox - public domain classics read aloud

OverDrive - must have an associated public library card

Blog Challenge: Day 18 "White Socks Only"

Blog Challenge: Tell about a favorite book to share or teach. Provide at least one example of an extension or cross curricular lesson.

In White Socks Only by Evelyn Coleman an African American grandmother tells her grandchild a story about a time when she faced discrimination. She drank water from a fountain which was for "whites only." She misunderstood thinking that the sign meant she must take off her shoes and be only in her white socks. This action begins changes for the town and its residents. This would be an excellent story to use during February's Black History Month. You can find it on Storyline Online. 

There are many cross curricular activities that you could do with this book from science (how long does it take to fry an egg on a sidewalk) to social studies (research an historical person and create a timeline of their life). I want to give you ideas based on Common Core Reading Anchor Standard 1 "Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text." We are also going to tie in a technology integration piece. 

After reading and discussing the book, students go back to the text to learn more about the characters. They do a character analysis and cite information from the story to support their ideas. Using VoiceThread, students add their thoughts and evidence. They also can go back and comment on their peer's ideas. Click here for an example from a session with elementary teachers. By using VoiceThread, you could also go outside your classroom walls and have others add their comments as well. You could partner with another class in this endeavor.

Blog Challenge: Day 14 Homework

Blog Challenge: Talk about homework. Do you give it? Why or why not? What types of HW do you give? How do you balance it with other demands?

Homework....a hot topic in many ways. Should students have homework, how much, how often, what kind? Should I think about flipping my class? What about grading homework? And on and on and on.

Instead of getting into a debate about homework, I am going to tell you one thing that was consistent in my classroom about homework. My students had to read 20 minutes each school night because I saw a difference in academic performance of students who read vs. those that didn't. Across the board, all subject areas. Research validates. Have your seen this infographic on reading? Pretty compelling!

The accountability piece in my classroom for those 20 minutes of reading time was a reading log with parent signature. Today, a Google Form could easily take the place of the paper log that my students kept. Click this link to see a sample. 

Blog Challenge: Day 13 Favorite Book....

Blog Challenge: Tell about a favorite book to share or teach. Provide at least one example of an extension or cross curricular lesson.

I am going to take creative liberty with today's blog challenge by sharing some online sites to access electronic books...

The first one I learned about from one of our Pinnacle leading Media Specialist. It is called MackinVia. The site is an eResouce Management system that provides access to eBooks and educational databases. One of my schools signed up for the free account and teachers now have access to 37 free books. It allows you to filter your books according to AR level or even Fountas and Pinnell. You can also create groups such as a classroom group where you save titles for those students. The system works across all platforms. Check it out.

The next site has been around for quite a while, but it is a great resource for online books. It is by the Screen Actors' Guild and is called Storyline Online. You can search their available books by title, author, and reader. All readers are actors and are members of the Screen Actors' Guild. You can pause and discuss the reading at anytime and if viewing on an IWB, you can highlight particular text.

Our county public library provides free access to Tumblebooks.
Tumblebooks provide non-fiction as well as fiction text for students. They have created this ebooks, by taking existing books and adding multimedia pieces that becomes a book that you can read or have read to you. Tumblebooks include videos and games as well.

Newsela

As a continuation of a few of my favorites that I learned about while at the iPad Summit, Newsela is at the top of the list. A huge component of Common Core Standards is reading nonfiction text. Sometimes it is hard to find relevant nonfiction text that your students can read, let alone want to read.

Newsela steps up to the plate by providing daily news articles in a variety of Lexile levels. Teachers can create an account and then set up a class. Students join the teacher's class by going to the site and joining by entering the class code. Both teachers and student have binders that will hold articles and quizzes assigned to the class. Teachers can see the student results right within the binder. Not all articles have quizzes, but many do. They even provide a daily email highlighting some of the daily news articles. You can simply click within the email to assign the article to the class. Sweet!

Even though I first learned of this at the iPad Summit, Newsela is web based, so it will work on any device.

You really need to check it out! Let me know what you think.