Showing posts with label digital reading. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Texture: The Netflix of Magazines
There's something about a magazine I enjoy. Maybe it's the relaxing nature of its content. Maybe it's the gloss and shine as I turn the pages. Maybe it's the shorter reads tucked within its pages. I do enjoy magazines but, honestly, as I've become more digital I don't read them as much. I just don't seem to have the interest in picking up a paper magazine, carrying it around, having it clutter up our house, and then having to properly recycle it. Additionally, I'm deterred by the ever increasing cost of picking up a magazine in the grocery store checkout line.
Though I've been a converted digital reader for some time, I still want a magazine to seem like a magazine when I read it. I've tried to order magazines on my device, but haven't found that to be easy enough that I have continued the practice.
Recently, however, all of that changed! A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Texture and have found myself once again spending time with magazines, a guilty pleasure. I began my subscription about two weeks ago, and have found Texture to be like finding a seat near the magazine rack at the local Barnes and Noble. I've been so excited about its content.
Texture:
- allows me to read from a variety of popular magazines.
- brings popular articles from different magazines to my attention.
- allows me to download magazines so I can read outside of a wifi network.
- allows me to create a "favorite" magazine shelf for quick access to the magazines I want to read most.
- maintains the look and feel of a magazine when I read from my tablet.
- can be placed on up to five devices.
While the perks of Texture are obvious for the magazine lover, I've recently discovered a perk as a teacher as the service has several children's magazines as part of its collections including: National Geographic Kids, Sports Illustrated Kids, Cricket and Ladybug. These titles are sure to be useful in providing digital shared reading opportunities with students.
Texture may well be the greatest thing since Netflix!
Sunday, October 11, 2015
#digilitSunday
#k6diglit
beginning readers
DigiLit
DigiLit Sunday
digital literacy
digital reading
Digital Reading: What's Essential
digital websites
early readers
emergent readers
people
DigiLit Sunday: Digital Reading Opportunities for Primary Learners
Finding sites for primary digital readers is something of greater challenge. Many of the sites we use work well for shared reading. Some of these sites students can return to, but for emergent and early readers many digital reading sites are too challenging. Just as in reading print books, I do work to find digital texts that students will be able to engage in independently. This is a much greater challenge when we are talking about our youngest readers. Since participating in the #cyberPD conversation around Digital Reading: What's Essential by Franki Sibberson and Bill Bass, I've been working to build the possibilities for the young readers I support to experience digital texts. Here are a few of my favorites sites for emergent and early readers:
Tumble Books: Tumble Books is a "read to me" site. I have been a fan of this site for beginning readers for years as it has a wide variety of books available. Many digital sites have books created specifically by developers for their sites, but Tumble Books has many of the popular picture books and early chapter books students might check out at their library available. The only challenge of Tumble Books is that it is a paid site, but it can be accessed through many libraries including our local Columbus Metropolitan Library Tumblebooks site.
National Geographic Kids Young Explorer Magazine Looking for informational text for young readers? National Geographic has really kept up with needs of student readers. No matter their product, print or digital, students enjoy finding out more with National Geographic. The Young Explorer digital site allows readers to view and/or listen to past National Geographic magazines. There are two versions available for reading: Scout and Voyager. Of course, a stop by the National Geographic Kids website can always provide additional digital material for students.
The Poem Farm with Amy Ludwig VanDerwater It's true, I'm a bit of a poetry fan so I like to make sure digital readers have the opportunity to experience poetry. Amy LV's site is the perfect stop for teachers as she shares so much about her writing process. Honestly, Amy's site is one of my favorite stops for digital writing mentor texts. You'll find her site to be helpful in planning for poetry mini lessons. You can look up poems by topic and technique making it a great stop for shared reading as well. However, this post is about digital reading for kids so I digress. The reason I like this site for our youngest readers is that Amy always includes a SoundCloud version of her poem. Students can revisit poetry and listen to her read it! There's nothing quite like hearing a poet read her own poetry.
Storyline Online Beginning readers need to hear the sounds of books. There's something about those wondrous words whispering in their ears through read aloud. Storyline Online has many titles available to listen to as they are read by readers you just might know.
Unite for Literacy This website is a must see for young readers. Displayed as a digital bookshelf, readers may click on a title of choice. Students can read the book independently or have a narrated voice read for them. Words are not highlighted and the narration is a bit choppy, but this is an excellent stop for finding digital books. Additionally, you can adjust the language to have different different languages read. When I switched the narration I was still viewing the English text, but with the other language narration.
eBooks with Narration Recently I noticed in my library's Overdrive site that digital titles are becoming available "with narration." In a recent stop to Overdrive, I discovered that books are becoming available with narration. This allows readers to view the text WHILE listening to the story being read to them. Game changer for younger readers! I've tried to find out more about this, but haven't been able to really get to the heart of what is available and if it will be sustainable shift in children's books. Anyone know anything more? Check out your library's digital reading section to see if titles are available.
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| Digital books with narration. Columbus Metropolitan Library |
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| You can see how I have been able to locate titles available with narration. |
I'm hoping to grow the list of sites available for my youngest readers. I'd love your recommendations.
Here are some other favorite digital sites (not all are for beginning readers):
Follow Mrs. Cathy's board Reading Websites on Pinterest.
As part of a continuous collaboration among educators interested in digital learning, Margaret Simon hosts a weekly Digital Learning round-up on her blog: DigiLit Sunday. Stop by Reflections on the Teche. Thursday, October 8, 2015
choice
digital reading
Padlet
people
reading archive
reading history
reading lives
reading wall
take home reading
Creating a Reading History Archive
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| Some readers are already starting to add response to their digital archives. |
Talking About Our Reading Lives
Last year as parent-teacher conferences rolled around, I decided I wanted parents to be able to hear from their children. Using Evernote presentation mode, I collected snapshots of work samples (more here) and began to create a story of these young literacy learners. I wanted parents to be able to hear from their readers so I decided to voice record a few discussion topics for parents. I had three basic topics of conversations with students that I recorded for parents:
- Tell me about yourself as a reader.
- What are your strengths as a reader?
- What are you working to improve as a reader?
I was quite surprised at how hard it was for my students to speak to these topics. When asked to talk about themselves as readers they didn�t really know how to begin. I would have to stop the recording to explain they could tell me anything: books they enjoyed, authors they loved, favorite spaces to read, topics they liked to read about, where they liked to get books, who read to them - anything. There were so many possible answers, but still they struggled to respond. Strengths and goals came easier as we talked about these in our reading time each day. It was at this time that I knew I needed to do a better job of helping my students to see themselves as readers and to begin to think about their reading lives.
Our Reading Lives
This is my second year working as a reading specialist supporting primary readers. These young readers receive intervention to help them make quick gains. Of course, this work requires teaching of many aspects of the reading process, but the part that is equally important is often the first part that gets lost in busy schedules: developing a reading life. Readers receiving support often have less time than peers for real reading. It�s not uncommon for them to spend more time in groups and be given the books they are to read at home. This leaves little time for them to find themselves as readers.
As a classroom teacher, there are so many more opportunities to support conversations around our literate lives than in the thirty minutes I have with students each day. When I was a classroom teacher, my students kept track of the books they took home each evening. While this helped us when books were temporarily misplaced, I found its greatest purpose was in talking about our choices in our reading lives. Since students chose their own book to take home each evening, it became a place to begin our conversations about reading choices. By looking at the recorded titles we could discuss the types of books selected. Did students have favorite authors, topics, genres, or other interests? We could also discuss the level of challenge of selections. Were students selecting books of appropropriate challenge? The record allowed us to look for patterns and push ourselves to grow past our places of comfort. In reading intervention, I needed to find a way to create these same opportunities in smaller windows of time.
Rewind to my first year in reading intervention. Families were used to a calendar that was to be initialed each evening to show students had read. As I didn't want my students to be discouraged by the cumbersome work of writing titles, I decided to continue the practice of a calendar signature. It wasn't long, however, until I was missing the benefits of archiving our reading history. Without keeping track of the titles students had read, I couldn't consider their choices. We couldn't talk about favorite titles or books that didn't really work. We couldn't push past our places of comfort. Most of all, I don�t think students realized how much reading they were really doing. They weren�t seeing themselves as they readers they were becoming. I knew I needed to find a better way to help students get to know themselves and archiving their reading life seemed a good place to start.
Archiving Our Reading History
There is much debate about keeping reading logs, and I am not talking about a logging system. In an extensive search I could find little written to support their use in a classroom. I think this is because often logs are used as a measure of accountability. Students are given a particular system, often parents are expected to sign and enforce, and parameters are placed on reading. This is really the opposite of what we hope to accomplish. We really hope our systems will ignite a fire in our readers, yet this rarely happens. Unintentionally we seem to discourage our real readers and frustrate those we are trying to bring on board. We hope our systems will:
- encourage student ownership of reading
- provide opportunities for choice and self-selection
- connect home and school reading
- help readers connect with other readers
- open a world of reading opportunity for our students
- begin conversations around reading with peers and in our reading communities
- help students to grow into different types of reading
- shift students toward intentional decision making
- make students more metacognitive about their reading lives
- most of all, fall in love with reading
This year I wrestled for weeks about archiving reading. There are systems available through sites like Bookopolis and Biblionasium. There are possibilities for keeping track of reading in writing or using Google docs. I didn't want a cumbersome system, but I did want to be able to talk about choices. I don�t think the vehicle matters as much as the purpose.
I did want these readers to realize how much reading they were doing across a year. I wanted them to begin to see themselves as the readers I knew they were. I wanted them to be able to talk about the books they were choosing. I wanted them to tell me about favorite books, authors, and genres. I knew I wasn�t concerned about the parent signature. Yes, I needed to get parents to help support reading at home, but it seemed to me I needed something better than a signature on a calendar. Honestly, I knew I had students the previous year who hadn�t read, but had signed calendars and those that had read in which calendars remained unsigned. I decided to help these readers grow their reading lives I needed to start with them. I needed to help them own their lives as readers, connect with others, and learn to talk about books.
To accomplish this, it seemed I needed to start with two changes. First of all, I felt I needed to work within classroom take home systems. Many of the students I work with are able to self-select books so I helping them to learn to make smart choices seems something I shouldn�t overlook. Secondly, I wanted a way they could archive their reading so that they could reflect on their reading lives.
Our Reading Walls
After much consideration I decided to create reading walls for each student on Padlet. There are many ways I could have accomplished having a reading archive, but I wanted something students would be able to own and would have continuous access. Padlet seemed an easy way to keep track of the books we were reading. We could take pictures of our books to add to our wall and easily add text or links as well.
- Each student has their own digital reading wall.
- Students have a QR code that will take them directly to their wall attached to their reading bags. This goes home with them each evening and is in the classroom during the day.
- Students just snap a picture of their book selection and place it on their wall.
- This creates a reading archive or record of some of the reading they have been doing and provides a starting point for continued conversation about our reading lives.
Growing Our Walls
I would never want a system that makes students not want to read. The ease of this system should make it seamless. We will only be adding the books students are selecting for home reading. Using Padlet will allow students to grow their walls in new ways if they choose to do so. For me, it is important they are able to make the choices about how they will use their wall. Some ways I envision readers might want to grow their wall:
- adding books read in class
- adding books read beyond the school day
- staging pictures of books read in favorite spaces
- adding comments about books
- including a personal written book recommendation
- adding links to more information about the book
- writing reflections on paper or in digital spaces and link them to the wall
If our goal is to truly help readers to develop their reading lives, we have to ask hard questions about our systems for home reading. Who is choosing the books? Are students required to do certain reading? How are students keeping track of reading? Are our systems cumbersome for students? Do our systems free students up to read or distract from our intent? I'm hoping I've found an authentic way for students to archive their reading histories to allow for purposeful conversation about the choices we make in our reading lives.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
#digilitSunday
#k6diglit
Amy Krouse Rosenthal
DigiLit
DigiLit Sunday
digital reading
Global Read Aloud
people
DigiLit Sunday: The Global Read Aloud 2015
As a reading intervention teacher, my plan is to take one day each week to read the title being discussed with students I support whose classes aren't participating #gra15. We will then likely take time to post on our blog and join the conversation with other classrooms via the hashtag #graAMY. I'm never quite sure where the event will go so I just dive in and get started. The connections and next steps seem to become obvious once we begin. Across the years I've learned to trust the process.
I've found certain benefits to be true year after year:
- Students get excited about the featured author.
- Students begin to notice patterns in the author's work.
- Students find authentic ways to respond and talk about the featured titles.
- Students learn to talk about books in connected conversations.
- Twitter allows us to see what others are thinking about the titles featured.
- Twitter allows us to connect with other classrooms around the world.
- Students talk about the author across the year.
I'm looking forward to joining the Global Read Aloud with my students. You can sign up for the Global Read Aloud here. Thanks to Pernille Ripp for getting us organized. I hope you'll join the global conversation. Who's in?
As part of a continuous collaboration among educators interested in digital learning, Margaret Simon hosts a weekly Digital Learning round-up on her blog: DigiLit Sunday. Stop by Reflections on the Teche.
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