Blog Archives

Crack the Books brings the "Wow" to Reading

9/30/2013

Pines to Vines, the first in a series of digital science books created for the iPad by Kyle Tomson, will make you and your students shout "Wow!" The science series is based on the National Academy of Science Standards for 2nd - 6th grade, and was designed in collaboration with teachers and science experts. Blades - a text on the grasslands has just been released.

(Social Studies books are in the development process, too.)

What's the "Wow" factor? Just for a start, each book that will be developed in the Crack the Books series can be adjusted to fit 5 reading levels (beginning reader through middle school.) This allows a classroom teacher to have all students in a mixed-ability class reading on their own level, while studying the same content. Each book includes comprehension questions and quizzes, and these can also be adjusted for reading level.

Your students will love the amazing visuals, engaging videos, interactive maps, animations and a host of other tricks to engage learners. They will be able to adjust text size, use voice over, insert personal bookmarks, use a pop-up dictionary for unknown words and other nifty features. See Tomson demonstrate this amazing tool here or at http://mobile-educationstore.com/itextbooks.

The books are selling for $18.99 - but before you think "expensive," keep in mind that these are interactive digital textbooks - extensive resources that will replace traditional texts that are much more expensive.

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Scaffolded Vocabulary Instruction

9/16/2013

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Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a vocabulary webinar by Maria Elena Arguelles. She proposed a simple scaffolding for introducing new vocabulary to students and I decided to use it this week, while adding a few of my own engagement strategies.

(The photo above, taken by Paul Baron, is of flexible bamboo scaffolding - reminding me that flexibility is key in a mixed-ability classroom!)

The word for the day, taken from Sprenger's list of critical common core verbs, was "organize." (See post from 8/29 for more info.) Here are the steps we took:

Activator:

I searched through my prop bag looking for something and finally just dumped the contents out so students could see how unorganized it was. This grabbed their attention and helped them make connections.

I introduced the word, the definition, and some synonyms.
I used the word correctly in a few sentences, having students respond with thumbs up/down.
I interspersed sentences that used the word incorrectly, having students respond with thumbs up/down.
I provided a sentence stem for students to complete with a partner - "I will organize ______________ so that ____________________________. We shared these as a whole group.
I had students individually complete the sentence stem.
On the following day, students worked individually with Educreations on the iPad to write a sentence, illustrate and record themselves. My co-teacher and I used their recordings as a formative assessment.

I liked this structure - it was simple, straightforward and provided the support needed by many of our students. Of course, because vocabulary acquisition is an ongoing process, we will be implementing a variety of other vocabulary activities during the semester to reinforce this instruction.

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Teaching Students How to Read Infographics

9/9/2013

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Infographics, the newest form of internet wallpaper, are complex representations of information. Because they seem to be popping up everywhere, students will need to be able to read and comprehend them. Yet, the characteristics and layout of infographics are varied - some more readable than others.

To help students approach these complex text forms, we printed out several types for them to explore. Each infographic was placed inside a page protector. Students used dry-erase markers to mark various elements of the info graphics. (You can do something similar with iPads and annotation apps.)

For example:

Place a star next to the very first thing that catches your eye.
Place a circle around the one word that best describes the topic.
Place a square around important quantitative information
Draw an arrow to point out the best graphic that helped you to understand the topic.
Put a smiley face next to the data source.
Draw an arrow showing the best pathway to follow to read all of the important information.

Students were able to realize that not all infographics read from left to right, top to bottom; not all infographics have sources listed and therefore may not be reliable; some infographics use much more effective visuals to make a point, and some have too much information! At the end of the lesson, students had to choose which infographic they are thought was the best and

If you would like to use some of the infographics we used in the lesson, you can find them at this weebly site.

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Crack the Books brings the "Wow" to Reading

Scaffolded Vocabulary Instruction

Teaching Students How to Read Infographics

Anne M. Beninghof

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