Digital Graphic Organizers

Once you have been teaching the same grade year after year, it typically gets a *little* easier because you have resources created, ideas, and experience with the majority of lessons and curriculum. On the contrary, as educators we know that depending on the group in front of you at this moment, you might need to completely reinvent a lesson to better suit the needs of this specific group.

This year I am quite often scaffolding more than I have in the past. One example is by creating templates/graphic organizers for my students that I print off and have them glue into the given subjects notebook. In past years, I would have students create the organizer themselves or copy it off the board, but this year (and last year to be honest) my students could not handle that. It was adding an extra layer of stress that was unnecessary for myself or my students. Was I assessing them on their ability to copy or to be able to fill out a tool to build their own thinking? Creating the organizer outline/template helped get students get started on what mattered most and those students who already struggle with following multi-step directions were able to get settled into the point of the lesson with much more success.

I often use PowerPoint to create my graphic organizers and I save them to go back to next year if needed. The graphic organizers are digital for me but still paper and pencil for my students. I keep contemplating about moving towards it being a more digital process for my students as well, but given that I teach 8/9 year old students who are still working on fine motor skills and letter formation, I am not sure how ready I am to lean even more into the digital realm. As I mentioned in a comment on a classmates blog post on this topic, maybe it is just "time to rip off the band-aid" and try it? 

Heading Image Source: https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/g/geoffmulgan/559259/geoffmulgan1.jpg

Digital Audio Tools in 3rd Grade

When thinking of using digital audio tools in the classroom one vivid example comes to mind from last year. 

In third grade (or elementary in general), students reading below grade level are put on a reading plan to receive added reading support from their teacher. This usually means a 4-5 days a week LLI (Leveled Literacy Intervention) reading group. Last year, I had one student significantly below grade level who also struggled socially with his peers. One of the big components of ELA in third grade includes THREE units that are done in book club- mystery book clubs, series/character studies book clubs, and animal research. My one student did not get a long well with the other students in his LLI group. When it came to do book clubs, I knew I could not keep him any longer with that same group even though they were the closest to his lower reading level. 

In comes the GENIUS of audio books! 

I was able to find a copy of the book Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid read aloud and easily navigable by page/chapter through a resource called Learning Ally. Because of this, I was able to put him with a group of students who he got along with much better (always played with them at recess) but were much higher readers. He LOVED it. Everyday during reading while his book club read from their books, he pulled out his book and iPad to listen to the agreed upon chapters. Listening to books was something he enjoyed and now he was able to join into group conversations with confidence and also felt like he was more included because he was grouped with students he typically belived thought he was "academically inferior" to them.

Stink Audio Book

My Big Take-Away:

Audio tools can bridge the gap between the many different types of learners we have in the classroom.

Another fun resource I use with my 4 year old and 3 year old at home DAILY that I also use with some students on Fridays during their morning choice time is a Yoto player!

We have a Yoto, which is essentially a very basic audio book player. I have purchased "cards" to put into it that read/tell different stories and play songs. There are no games or other components to it- basic and easy to use for my littles! We also love listening to the fun daily podcasts "Yoto Daily", which has themed days- from follow along drawings, 5 facts about a Country, riddles and rhymes, and more. After listening to them with my daughters for a few months, I began using it in the classroom and some of my third graders love the short podcasts to listen to after they unpack in the mornings.

Yoto Daily Podcast with Jake

Top Image:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sean-pillars-19a58156_i-met-someone-once-who-thanked-me-profusely-activity-7117559523216674816-rVT3?trk=public_profile_like_view

15 Seconds is All You Get

I recently read a quick article for teachers about how when writing an email out to parents, we literally have 15 seconds to grab their attention. 

15 seconds to share the most concise summary of what we want parents to remember, because beyond that you will lose 80% of your audiences attention. I believe the same is very true with our students in the classroom, as I am sure many of can relate! For this reason, I have stopped sending my weekly emails on Fridays summarizing with a sentence or two per subject about what happened. I had many parents email me asking questions that were directly answered in those emails. I did my best to keep them short and sweet, but some weeks were longer than others. This year, I simply post to our SeeSaw account with PICTURES and short captions. My goal has been to post one picture per subject a week. 

I also made sure to start using visuals for my ELA and math lessons. Chances are that students (even the most focused of the bunch!) zone out for a moment or two (or five...) and providing a source for them to look for reminders of the work going on helps them to gain independence and problem solve. 

These visuals may be short typed out steps of what is going on, a reminder of the teaching point from the lesson, or an image that helps tie together the learning to what hopefully can be a visual cue. I have noticed this especially helpful with my ELA lessons. Usually our reading and writing lessons are ended with an open ended "off you go" and the expectation that they do the given skills taught in the mini lesson. My team and I have spent countless prep times discussing how much scaffolding our students need and how without a direct task not much happens after the "off you go". Providing directions via a visual image is a phenomenal way to scaffold for ALL students.

One of the things I love about our new math curriculum (we are in year two of piloting it), is that the directions to a problem ALWAYS state this exact phrase, "show your thinking in pictures, words, or numbers." I have noticed that the amount of times I ask students to show their thinking has drastically decreased but they are explicitly told that they can do it in a variety of ways and we taught them what each type of thinking could look like.

In "5 Smart Ways to Use Digital Images in the Classroom" (https://www.teachthought.com/technology/digital-images-classroom/), I found a strategy that immediately stood out to be as something I want to implement. It was about visual storytelling and using images to prompt thinking and writing. I was thinking about using it once a week in their "Free Write" section of their journal. When I give students open free write time, some kids immediately go off into their imagination and begin. Of course, however, some kids who are just as lost during this moment of pure control/choice as they are during a guided lesson. I would project the image, but also print off mini versions of it to glue onto the page and have them write below it. 

Some of my favorite apps to use at the moment:

-SeeSaw: Students can take pictures of tangible work and add typed out/drawn annotations, images, and thinking. I have used this in science to take a picture of an experiment and label what is happening, as well as in reading to annotate their own writing.

-BookCreator: This allows students creativity in putting together and celebrate writing in all genres. We have used this to publish our informational writing (all about expert topics) and the kids LOVE it.

-PicCollage: A great way to show students how to search for images, caption them, and use them to help teach others. We used this for students to present research on a region of Michigan in Social Studies.

This image I pulled from Once Upon a Picture, recommended by classmate and immediately bookmarked it. I love the variety of pictures provided (realistic and fantasy) and could see myself using it during Morning Meeting discussions, as well as for fun writing prompts! I also love how the pictures have guiding questions to go along with them. 

https://www.onceuponapicture.co.uk/portfolio_page/cat-school/

Digital Reading in the Elementary Classroom

As a kid, there was nothing more exciting than a trip to our local library with my mom. I'd go in with a plastic grocery bag and 30 minutes to "shop". I would be walking out already reading and the bag full of books would last me a week or two at most. Books followed me everywhere at home (yes, even the bathroom) and my mom used to say that I did not read but that I devoured them, and as a Polish immigrant she was delighted that through books I was learning the English language.

One huge shift that I have noticed in my 8 years of teaching so far is that not many parents take their kids to the library. Most parents work and kids are signed up for all the extra curricular activities, that there is "no time". The only library experience most of my students have is their once a week 45 minute Media class that combines STEM and technology with book checkout time; the majority of my students do not even check out books because they do not know how to look for books, they do not have enough time, or they just do not want to. 

With the societal change of the family and work/home dynamic, the idea of making books accessible sounds incredible. If we can not bring the kids to the library, let us bring the library to them! 

Right?

In my 3rd grade classroom, students have their book bins full of "shopped" for books from our classroom library that they use daily. Twice a week they have opportunities to read from Epic! or Libby, our two most used reading apps with the district provided iPad's. After looking through LifeWire: Tech for Human's post about Best Free Kindle Book Sites for Kids, I noticed that Amazon seems to have the most options. Thousands of books for free that are easily accessible and navigate well. However, giving students access to Amazon sounds like a risk and I am not sure how that would work. Though if there was a completely separate Amazon Kindle for SCHOOL/STUDENTS app, that would be INCREDIBLE. The readability of books via Amazon is realistic and fun. If students could be provided with a Kindle to read on which has much different lighting than an iPad, I would be all for it!

Books that I previewed/found from sites like freebooksy and eReaderIQ all took me to the Amazon site itself. 

Dragons of Lilia via Amazon Kindle

The Dinosaur Who Discovered Hamburgers 2: Cutting The Big Cheese via Amazon Kindle

Kayan Goes to Mexico City via Amazon Kindle

Alice in Wonderland via Project Gutenberg

Two Shoes via One Hundred Books

I tried searching book series on the Project Gutenberg site because we teach a Character Studies Book Series Book Clubs units, but none of the options were good fits for a 2024 classroom. The Alice in Wonderland book was readable as a webpage in basic Times New Roman font that you would have to keep scrolling to read. It looked like a long typed up research essay, BUT did offer many of the books I remember reading as a high school student.

All in all, I do believe that how I use and approach e-reading in my classroom might need to shift in the near future. I just need to figure out how to judge if it is helping my students. 

How do I measure the success of reading?

Will my student F&P scores show an improvement? Will my students have a stronger love of reading? Will they come in excited to show the really cool book they found last night? 

Heading Image from Picturequotes.com

New Literacies in the Classroom

I am most definitely a "digital immigrant", though my mom would not agree with this statement.

I print things to read them better. I rented a hard copy of the textbook for this course because reading an e-book is not my cup of tea, although I have recently joined the "Kindle Readers Club". The convenience to read books easily at night while holding my daughters when they were babies and needed frequent nap and bedtime snuggles was hard to beat. I prefer typing final works but am an avid pencil and paper notetaker. I have notebooks full from professional developments while my coworker has everything on a single document in the Notes app on her iPad. 

I have fully embraced some parts of this new era, but still hang on (tightly) to old literacies.

Right now my third graders are just starting a unit in reading and writing called "Reading/Writing to Research"; the way the unit was originally designed and how we have been teaching it, is to mostly use books as research texts. We read informational texts to pull out details, synthesize, and discuss ideas, then write an informational chapter about one subtopic on their animal. It is a favorite unit for many but also incredibly challenging. Many lessons are added in to help them successfully navigate informational texts, learn how to take notes without copying every single word written by the author, and add in their own thinking to the research they have done. The literacies touched on most are information, traditional, and visual.

 I wonder if we should make the decision to focus on integrating more media, digital, and computer literacy within this specific Animal Research Unit. Perhaps start with the digital and teach into the skills of researching and writing informational with them. Towards the end of the unit, back up the learning by reinforcing knowledge gained with library books. 

This is something to consider and talk about with my team!

How often do people go to the library or Barnes and Noble to check out a book when trying to learn something new? When I am trying to learn more about gardening, preserving, and drying produce, I instantly go to Google and Instagram to watch videos of others partaking in the same skills. 

The biggest struggle about integrating the new literacies?

Time and support. 

This is always the number one challenge when trying to integrate any new learning or brand new curriculum. While these new literacies can be integrated within current ELA, math, science, and social studies lessons, in elementary more time is needed to teach the skills that are needed to succeed as well as the content. I also need technology that always works or readily available support when things glitch, as they did today when I tried sending videos about the animals each group was studying and none of the videos worked on student iPads. I had a wonderful lesson modeling a new skill, the class was engaged, focused, and ready to go...... until technology once again failed.

I'll gladly teach what my students need to succeed in our changing society, but I need to have all the tools in place to do. 

Header Image from Education Weekly

https://www.edweek.org/technology/opinion-how-many-educators-are-really-literate/2016/07