Literacy Now

As residents of Alabama, my students and I rarely experience much in the way of snow. A few flakes are a treat, and any accumulation has the potential to be an event. In the midst of the snow days resulting from last week’s wintry weather, a colleague suggested via Twitter that students would likely have stories to share from their snow-and-ice-capades. Other teachers joined the online conversation, and a few tweets later we had a plan for collecting and sharing their experiences with each other and with the world. We spread the word through Edmodo, Twitter, text messages, and Instagram itself, asking our school community—students, teachers, and parents alike—to share their stories through a photo and a six-word memoir. Our chosen storytelling platform: Instagram.

Getting Started with Instagram
We selected Instagram because it is both widely used already and user-friendly for beginners and because it allows for the sharing necessary for a successful community event. To start using Instagram, first download the app, which is available for iOS or Android, then create an account. When signed in, users can take photos using the app itself or import photos already in their device’s camera roll. Instagram allows a limited degree of photo editing, including cropping and adding filters, and adding a caption is the final step before sharing a photo on Instagram and in other spaces such as Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Instagram Video
In addition to photos, Instagram also allows users to film short videos, up to fifteen seconds in length, and post them using the same method used for posting photos. Much like the photo options, there are some options for minor editing and filtering of videos once their shot.

Using Hashtags
You may choose to follow other Instagram users within your school or community, and others may follow you. However, hashtags offer a way to connect your posts with others’ without the need for a follow. For example, our school uses the hashtag #RQMSJags to connect social media posts. For our snow day storytelling, we asked participants to include #RQMSJags in their photo captions, so a search for the hashtag on Instagram would yield all the relevant posts. You might develop a similar hashtag for your entire school or choose instead to create a class, grade-level, department, or event hashtag for your purposes. Whatever you choose, communicate your desire to use a hashtag to ensure that all participants’ posts are included in the ongoing conversation.

Collecting Instagram Posts
At times it may be helpful to gather a collection of related Instagram posts in one place for easy viewing and sharing. Storify is the perfect tool for this job. Users can log in to Storify using an existing Facebook or Twitter account or create an account on the Storify website, then search for and collect desired posts across social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google+. The collection of posts can be rearranged, and edited to include a title, story description, and headers to guide readers along the way and then shared via a link or embedded on a website or blog. See our collection of snow stories below.

Storytelling
Instagram may be used as a platform for documenting a shared experience like our snow days or a school field trip. However, there are other options for utilizing this tool for storytelling purposes. Instagram photos can serve as writing prompts with students building collaborative stories in the comments or writing individual stories elsewhere. Posts might offer teasers for upcoming class content or ask students to make predictions about future events in a novel, as well. 

Grammar and Vocabulary Practice
As part of ongoing grammar and vocabulary studies, I often ask students to seek out examples of word usage or common errors “in the wild”—on signage around town, in their favorite publications, and online. Instagram offers an easy way for students to document these sightings and share them with me and with their classmates. Additionally, students can post photos that demonstrate understanding of new vocabulary or literary devices and practice vocabulary usage or grammatical forms through comments in response to posted photos.

Other Uses for Instagram
Instagram is a flexible and powerful tool that allows for a wide variety of uses. In addition to those mentioned above, it can be use for showcasing student work, sharing daily activities within a class or whole school, and much more. Please share your ideas for using Instagram in the comments section below.   

Laren Hammonds teaches 8th grade language arts at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her interests include media literacy, cross-curricular collaboration, and the design of learning spaces. Connect with her on Twitter where she goes by @_clayr_, or read more at her blog, Game to Learn.

February’s International Reading Association (IRA) Member of the Month is Brandie McNabb, second grade teacher and President-Elect of the Louisiana Reading Association, the host state of the IRA 59th Annual Conference to be held in New Orleans from May 9-12, 2014. Reading Today caught up with Brandie to ask her about her plans for the conference in her home state, her experiences as Teacher of the Year and a National Board Certified teacher, why she loves Dr. Seuss, and her thoughts on why to become and why not to become a teacher!

When did you know you wanted to become a teacher?

I always wanted to be a teacher. I can remember helping my aunt set up her classroom each summer. It seemed like the coolest job ever! I had many people trying to influence me to pursue other fields. I unfortunately listened to them when I first finished college, but I finally did come back to what I feel was my calling in life.

Which children's literature books influenced your decision to become a literacy educator?

Anything by Dr. Seuss! He felt that children’s books were boring and wondered why anyone would want to read a boring book. Amen! Whether it makes you laugh or cry, there is nothing like a good book. The best feeling is to read a book to my class and see their anticipation of what the next page has to say.

How did you begin your career, and what led you to your current position?

Oh that’s a great question! As I mentioned, I wanted to be a teacher even in high school. But also I had a friend whose mom was a teacher. She said, “Don’t do that. You won’t make any money.” I listened and ventured off to nursing school. When it was time to begin my clinical work, I realized that wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I finished college with a General Studies degree. I worked in a pharmacy for several years before realizing I still felt that calling to be a teacher. I found out about an Alternate Certification Program in education. The rest is history. I’m currently getting my masters in Curriculum and Instruction.

I’ve been in my current position, second grade, for eleven years. My school district has only been in existence for eleven years. I was lucky to be with them from the beginning. Our school district doesn’t have neighborhood schools but has grade level clusters, which I think is part of the key to our success. We’ve been the number one district in our state for the past eight years. My school has only first and second grades, which means every child in our district will attend our school.

What can literacy educators do to motivate kids to want to read?

Help them find the right book! Many times, teachers give the students the books to read. Letting students choose what they want to read is giving them a voice. In my reading groups, I provide them with books on their instructional level, but I always make sure that they get to pick books to bring home too.

How long have you been a member of the International Reading Association? How has membership influenced your career?

I’ve been a member of IRA for over ten years. At first, it was just to attend conferences, but I slowly became more and more involved. In 2008, I started the local reading council in my school district. I wanted to give reading teachers in our district an opportunity to come together and talk. It was a way to learn the latest and best methods without leaving our schools. Through ZARC, I’ve become active in the state’s council, Louisiana Reading Association (LRA). I’ve developed some great friendships with some great leaders in reading. Janet Langlois was the first person I met when I first started researching the possibility of creating a council. She took time to meet with me and provided an enormous amount of help in the process. As the President-Elect for LRA, I hope to honor Janet's memory by making her and my other new found friends proud.

What are you looking forward to doing at the Annual Conference in New Orleans?

Oh, there’s so much! Of course I have to mention the exhibit hall; what teacher doesn’t love exploring the new books, meeting the authors, and collecting lots of free stuff? I enjoy looking through the program and studying which sessions I want to attend. It’s exciting and frustrating at the same time because I can’t be in three places at once! Discovering new ideas, learning about new technology, and making connections with other literacy teachers just amplify the event. 

What do you consider to be your proudest career moment?

That’s a hard question to answer and pick one. It was an honor to be picked Teacher of the Year several years ago by my colleagues. Achieving National Board Certification was a highlight too, but I honestly think what is most rewarding is getting those e-mails from former parents or seeing former students. It means the world when they take the time to let me know how they are doing and how they still love to read. Knowing that parents want their kids in my class lets me know I’m doing my job and is the biggest reward I could ever receive.

What do you like to do when you're not wearing your educator hat?

I love spending time with my family, traveling, reading, and trying to not think about school. I have two girls, ages eight and three. My husband and I love to travel, and we are always dreaming about that ultimate trip.

What's the best advice you could offer someone new to the profession?

Don’t give up; remember why you became a teacher. Dig down deep, and remember why you became a teacher. If it’s because you’re off holidays and weekends, think again. Teachers bring work home constantly. If it’s because you want to make a difference, GO FOR IT! Get involved and stay active either in educational organizations or volunteering for activities at your school. I love to teach reading, even on those bad days. But when you see a child smile because they read the book independently for the first time or made a B on a comprehension test, you’ll remember why you are here.

Just as the TILE-SIG series on Reading Today Online provides a place for us to share ideas regarding issues in the field of technology and literacy education, online publications, communities, and blogs can be used in the classroom to foster collaboration and sharing among students and a wider audience. As access to technology and the plethora of digital resources increase, blogging can be a viable tool for increasing collaborative opportunities in the classroom setting.

p: BarbaraLN via photopin

Blogs offer endless possibilities for use in the classroom. Zawilinski (2009) suggests developing students’ higher order thinking skills through reflection, response to literature, and sharing of class news and student work. Students can use blogs as a forum for literature discussion within and beyond the classroom. Having an authentic audience to communicate with about commonly read literature beyond the four walls of the classroom can enhance students’ motivation and engagement with reading.

The use of blogs also allows for cross-curricular connections. Blogging from the perspective of a historical figure allows students to interact with content-area text in meaningful ways. Using a perspective guide (Lapp, Wood, Stover, & Yearta, 2011), the teacher poses several thought-provoking questions for students to respond to from the point of view of a historical figure such as a Union or Confederate soldier. These responses could be shared on students’ blogs where, remaining in character, they could then engage in digital dialogue with their peers.

Using the blog as a space for scientific thinking can also allow students to create and share content specific writing. Students can respond to experiments or pose questions to one another.  Additionally, students can write content-based “I am what I am” poems. See the example below written from the perspective of a plant cell.

I am what I am
I am a plant cell and I’m pretty amazing
I am different than an animal cell
I am green
because of chlorophyll
I maintain structure
because of my cell wall
I take energy from the sun and water
to make my own food
in a process called photosynthesis
I am what I am

In math, students can respond to a thought-provoking “problem of the week” on a class blog. Here, they can create word problems for their peers to complete and can also discuss their problem solving process. With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards across much of the United States, students are required to show their thinking when working through math problems. The Smarter Balanced standardized assessments currently require that students are aware of their thinking and can explain how they arrived at a particular answer. Sample math problems from Smarter Balanced can be found here. Encouraging students to create and work through problems on the blog gives students a platform to share their mathematical thinking and reasoning with a wide audience.

Blogs can be used in a myriad of ways across the curriculum while also providing teachers with a form of authentic assessment as students’ thinking and inner conversations are shared (Stover & Yearta, in press). Teachers and students’ peers can reply to posts by leaving comments and asking questions to probe for deeper understanding. Students can also use blogs as a form of ongoing self-assessment. By returning to previously written blog posts, students can set goals and reflect on their growth over time.

Blogs offer a digital landscape for students to interact with their peers within and beyond the four walls of the classroom. Examples of kid-friendly blogs include www.kidblog.org and www.quadblogging.net.

References

Lapp, D., Wood, K.D., Stover, K., & Yearta, L.S. (2011, Nov. 7). “You’re on a ‘Role’ with Perspective Guides” in Rigorous Real-World Teaching and Learning. International Reading Association. Retrieved from /Libraries/Members_Only/Lapp-Fall_2011-Perspective.pdf.

Stover, K. & Yearta, L. S. (in press). Using blogs as formative assessment of reading
comprehension. In K. Pytash, R. Ferdig., & T. Rasinski. (Eds.) Technology and reading: New approaches to literacy competency. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Zawilinski, L. (2009). HOT blogging: A framework for blogging to promote Higher Order
Thinking. The Reading Teacher, 62(6), 650-661.

Katie Stover is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Furman University in Greenville, SC. She can be contacted at katie.stover@furman.edu.

Lindsay Sheronick Yearta is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, SC.  She can be contacted at lyearta@uscupstate.edu.

Raise your hand if you’d like to create a “picture-perfect” classroom—a place where your students are engaged and responding eagerly. A place where you hear the “Oh, man! We have to clean up already?” comments when your students just want to keep going. Can this classroom truly exist in today’s high-tech, fast-paced world?

p: Enokson via photopin cc

While the “picture-perfect” classroom may seem like more of a dream than a reality, it is certainly not impossible. At the end of each day, teachers want to feel confident that their students are going home with a sense of wonder and accomplishment. Educational games—desktop computers and tablets included—provide effective teaching tools that can motivate students and captivate their interests to foster this environment.

So, how do you get started?

1. Begin by personalizing the relationships with students.
Establish personal connections and build a strong rapport with your students at the start. From the moment Kaylee walks into the room, acknowledge her with a high five and a “Good morning.” Spend time in small groups to ask Tommy and Stephen, who play together at recess, what they spend their time doing at home. Plop down next to Sheila, who never speaks up in class, and find out what excites her. Personalizing relationships with your students from the start sets a positive tone, sets expectations, and helps them feel connected. After all, kids are more absorbed in the material if the classroom culture is welcoming and expectations are clear.

How does this impact e-gaming?
Educational gaming personalizes the learning environment for your students. It does this by offering approaches that will not only meet their learning styles, but also their individual interests as well.

2.  Incorporate objectives faithfully.
When planning a game-based learning lesson, teachers must adhere to learning objectives and goals. “Playing video games to learn” sounds like fun to anyone, but administrators and parents will only buy into it if the games are intentionally aligned to the curriculum.

How does this impact e-gaming?
According to nonprofit research firm SRI International, children are 90 percent more engaged when they are actively participating in an activity, as compared to simply reading. Educational games increase active engagement in the lesson. E-gaming ties the skills to their keenest interests, which, in turn, initiates digging further into an interest without being told to do so.

3. Avoid reinventing the wheel.
While teachers often come up with their own creative ways to integrate technology into lesson plans, online resources such as Submrge, Graphite, Edshelf and Edutopia provide inspiration for teachers. Resources like these are dedicated to empowering teachers with helpful hints, imaginative ideas, and lesson plans to ignite student learning without reinventing the wheel.

How does this impact e-gaming?
Today’s tech-savvy kids will be more engaged through digital-learning technologies. Using readily available resources will allot you more time to integrate the standards into your day. 

4. Organize small group stations.
Just as there are many philosophies in education, there are differing opinions about small group instruction, as well. However, if specific expectations are established from the beginning, you’ll avoid a classroom management nightmare.

How does this impact e-gaming?
Placing students in small groups enables you to adjust gradually to the use of e-gaming in the classroom. Begin with three to four stations, depending on your class size, focusing at least one of those stations on using digital learning tools.

Suggested stations include:
Station 1: Teacher instructed– Personalized learning enables teachers to key in on learning styles.
Station 2: Technology integration – Skill-based programs on a tablet or computer.
Station 3: Independent study – Students work independently to accomplish a task.
Station 4: Small group collaboration – Students collaborate to complete tasks.

Overwhelmed yet? Start small.
Since you’ve read this far, you’re already interested in enriching your curriculum with digital learning. While it may seem overwhelming at first, feel free to start small. Providing your students with just a few minutes of digital learning and increasing the amount each day channels their energies and personalizes their learning. With practice and patience, your students will be performing like critical thinkers and problem solvers in no time at all.

Lindsey Hill is a two-time Elementary Teacher of the Year honoree and veteran teacher of 14 years. As the lead for reading engagement innovation at Evanced Solutions, LLC, she explores current trends in reading innovation to aid in the development of solutions that increase reading proficiencies among our youth. By spending time with parents, teachers, librarians and students in and out of elementary classrooms, Lindsey is able to demonstrate how kids can embrace their interests to learn and read proficiently.

While sitting and waiting for a plane recently, I heard an advertisement for a Microsoft laptop suggesting it was better than a Chromebook. Among other things, the advertiser pointed out that because it opens into Chrome’s browser when it starts up, a Chromebook has to use the Internet to be able to work. In addition, you cannot use outside software such as Photoshop or Microsoft Office on a Chromebook. However, I’ve heard others suggest that the Chrome browser has most of the capabilities one might need in a computer. Students in schools who have adopted Chromebooks, for example, can access an infinite number of online texts and interactive tools as well as a range of dynamic web based applications such as Google Docs and Google Earth.

Given these differences in opinions, I decided to investigate further to see firsthand how teachers feel about using Chromebooks in the classroom. I visited a second grade classroom to observe their use of Chromebooks and talked to the teacher to see how she was using them to build reading and writing skills in her curriculum.

The school I chose to observe in had received their Chromebooks from a grant the year before. Even though it was already December when I visited, the class had only been using them for a short time because there was quite a bit of set up involved by their school’s technical support team before they could be used in the classroom.

The teacher explained how Google Apps for Education had provided the school with a unique domain. This enabled them to safely store all of their e-mail and student work in its own part of the cloud. After connecting the Chromebooks to this domain, each student classroom was set up on the school’s domain with a class email address. Each student was also assigned a unique login to access the system so each student had his/her own private workspace.  

As I entered the classroom, all of the students were sitting at their desks with their Chromebooks in front of them, writing an acrostic poem about winter for their English assignment. Students were using Google Drive to work on a word processing document (Google Docs), and the teacher was using an add-on script called Doctopus to send assignment prompts to each student (see the how-to guide for more information). She was able to create one document and then send it out so that each of the students received their own copy named with their own name. The teacher also had access to each of their drives and could monitor what students were doing in Google Docs from her computer. Other management techniques to increase teacher efficiency with Chromebooks can be employed with a tool called Hapara.

While I was observing, the teacher was sitting in the back of the room helping some of her students. At the same time, she was keeping an eye on what was going on in the rest of the room. She had arranged the seats so that she could sit in the back of the room and see all of the screens. If she saw someone who needed a reminder or additional support, she could quickly type right into their Google Drive document rather than taking time away from the students she was working with. 

I also noticed that these second graders were applying a broad range of skills to their work. For example, they had learned how to efficiently navigate into their account and then to Google Drive to access their document. Although their typing was slow, they were also learning how to use a keyboard. Since the document saved automatically, there was no time lost in redoing documents because of common mistakes like a student forgetting to save his work or inadvertently saving over someone else’s document.

Outside of using Google Drive as a main source of productivity applications, Chromebooks start instantly when they are turned on, as opposed to a more traditional laptop operating system that keeps users waiting for a number of applications to start up in the background. Another significant benefit is that unlike most laptops, Chromebooks hold a charge for eight hours, so there is no need to recharge them during recess or lunch. This reduces the amount of time teachers need to spend managing laptop power issues, and allows more time for meaningful teaching. Because their data is stored in the cloud, several students can easily share one Chromebook and keep their work separate; they simply sign in with their own account and password to access their personal files.  Students can even design their own desktop and icon or logo for signing in. Of course, a necessity for using Chromebooks in school is a robust Internet connection since the Chrome browser is central to every activity. 

At the time, most of the programs that were used in this classroom were available online, as shown in their Chromebook Classroom List. There are useful teaching guides for Chromebooks, such as this one by Kathy Schrock. Google Apps also has an Apps Document and Support page that’s incredibly useful for teachers. However, a few specialty programs at the school would not work with the Chrome system. The STEAM teacher, for example, could not use the Chromebooks with her students because her Robotics software could not be installed on them.

Overall, after my visit to this classroom, my conclusion is that Chromebooks can be an excellent way to teach most things in the classroom. In time, the Chromebook will become even more useful as more specialty programs like Robotics are made available online and the Internet becomes quicker and more robust at schools. If a school has a weak Internet connection or if it is often down, Chromebooks are not an ideal solution for a classroom.

Janice Friesen is self-employed as a Technology Tutor. Her company, I’m not a Geek.com, provides hourly one on one or small group training to people who missed bits and pieces of technology use and need to learn for various reasons. She has a teaching credential and Masters in Educational Technology. She worked for many years in Elementary Schools with teachers and students.

This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).