Javorsky discusses the wide variety of features and
formatting that appear in digital stories. I have noticed that high quality
e-books can be difficult to find when putting together my listening center. Does
anyone have a good resource for digital stories (especially ebooks or ebook
apps)? Right now I use Apps Gone Free.
Johnson’s table 5.4 shows a list of criteria when choosing
digital texts. What criteria do you/would you/could you use to pick what digital stories
your kids read? Some criteria that I have for ebook apps are: 1. Does it read
the words to the kids? 2. Does it highlight the words for the kids? 3. Is this
a book that I would read aloud to my class? 4. Are there features that may be
too distracting for my kids (noises, effects, embedded games)?
I thought chapter 6 of Johnson was very interesting because
I had not considered how important it is to directly teach children to
comprehend the digital texts they are reading. One resource that I use whole
group, small group, and individually with students is PebbleGo. It is an online
encyclopedia for early childhood that reads to children and has multimedia includes
videos, pictures, and other graphics. When I read an article whole group, I
model and practice how to use the headings and pictures to preview the text,
how to use context clues before checking the glossary for a term, etc. I
sometimes have students draw a picture or write about a piece of new
information or a interesting/favorite/confusing part to monitor comprehension
and to help students practice communicating their comprehension. How do you/would you/could you model, practice, and assess children’s comprehension of digital texts?
Wolsey and Johnson both talk about the idea of using
technology to build students’ vocabularies. This is an idea that I am
struggling to figure how to fit into my own practice in kindergarten. How do
you/would you/could you use new literacies to build support your child’s
vocabulary?
There are so many digital stories available to use in the classroom - these chapters give so many resources! I love storynory.com and wonderopolis.org now! I didn't know about these websites before reading, but I'm so excited to implement these for comprehension and vocabulary instruction soon. I plan on using wonderopolis.org for morning work to give my students a vocabulary jump-start to the day. There's a website that my teammate uses to do digital read-alouds with her students at the end of each day called audible.com and it's through amazon. She purchases or downloads free digital stories, and her class uses a class set of the paperback copies to follow along. I think that's something that could benefit students if you take it a step further and incorporate vocabulary instruction and comprehension skills.
ReplyDeleteI want to begin modeling comprehension of digital texts better for my students after reading chapter 6. I want to show them how I highlight and look up a word that I don't know, and read for deep understanding. I want to teach them how to chunk the reading and re-read for more understanding. Right now we use AR (I know it sucks, but we are forced since it comes out of our Title1 funds - AGH!) and writing prompts to assess comprehension. I'll usually read something with them on the SMARTboard, and then model/discuss the skill and give a writing prompt revolving around the skill.
How do you guys assess comprehension of digital texts??
Have you ever heard of Think Marks? They are great for a quick, easy assessment that you could have kids do on a post-it. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Think-Mark-Anchor-Chart-969351 You can assign students a certain Think Mark to look for while reading or you can have them choose the Think Mark they will write about. They write the symbol and write/draw about the Think Mark. For older kids, you might assign them a more than one Think Mark depending on the text.
DeleteNo but these are awesome! I feel like I could beef them up a bit and totally use these for quick exit tickets after reading. Thanks!
DeleteWhen selecting digital texts, I think some of the most important criteria from the chart for me to keep in mind at the high school level would be: 1.) Does the text include information that is culturally or factually inaccurate or misleading? (And if so, exploring that needs to be a purpose for reading it.) 2.) If the text is narrative, does it follow standards for literary merit? 3.) If the text is informational, is the information accurate and organized in an accessible way that is interesting to the intended audience? 4.) (This one isn't exactly from the chart, but is important given the very low reading levels of most of my students.) Is the text written with a degree of challenge for readers that is appropriate but not overwhelming to them?
ReplyDeleteI think that when it comes to digital text comprehension, it's important that we are authentic about our modeling and about our students' practice opportunities. At the high school level, it would be really easy for me to find an article online for them to read that could just as easily be printed off. That's why they need to be engaging in more authentic, multimodal situations. They need to have a purpose beyond "read this because I said so." They need to be researching. They need to be engaging with all aspects of the text (embedded videos, charts, links to other sites/pages, etc.). If it's an ebook, they need to be annotating/highlighting if the reading app allows for such interaction. If our students see us do these things, and if we give them appropriate opportunities, they will better learn strategies for comprehending digital texts.
Such a great point about being authentic with our modeling and students' practice opportunities...now I'm brainstorming how I could include more multimodal interactions and practice with annotating digital texts in elementary! If I could at least expose my kids to these practices, maybe it would help them later on in their secondary careers.
DeleteAngela, I completely agree that it is very important to present students with meaningful work when it comes to digital text. There is sometimes an attitude in public schools that any digital text is desirable because it integrates technology into the classroom. Often that leads students to interacting with digital text in a very one-sided, passive way.
DeleteDr Ruan showed us this week that OU has a subcription to Scholastic Book Flix! :) (I can give you girls the information if you'd like)... This website has animated book videos and online books that can read to students. From what I've seen, it's a website mostly for elementary schoolers, but it looks to be a wonderful website for ELLs! Scholastic also has information about each author and comprehension games for each book! Something that I really love about this website is that it provides a fiction and nonfiction book for each topic. I think it is a great idea to tie fiction and nonfiction stories together with a common subject. It helps kids make connections.
ReplyDeleteI think when reading online texts, we need to model how to read and use the website for kids. We need to talk about following along with the text if there is a person reading aloud. We need to talk about using the pictures and textual clues to deepen comprehension. I think that kids need to know that although reading on a computer/iPad is different, the strategies we use still need to be the same.
I like Book Flix a lot! I do notice that it has a limited number of books. Right now I am tying a free trial of Skybrary to see if it has a wider selection. I will let you guys know!.
DeleteThis is a nice beginning to a discussion but just a beginning. Check the rubric, ladies, as you need to have more interaction with each other.
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