This term has been one of trial and error and trying to figure out the best way to use digital tools in the classroom with reading. This term is report time so I am currently underway with completing running records. Hopefully this data will show some shift so watch this space as I will update this as soon as I have all of this data.
Text to type:
Text to type has been working with some of my learners with their reading. I found learners were able to find the words they had said incorrectly while they were reading however they weren't really doing much with this after. This is still something that I will continue to use in the classroom throughout the year as an extra activity. I liked the idea of the students going away and reading the text again and being accountable for this reading. I wanted something along these lines that would also be something they could revisit so I decided to try something else.
What is the something else?
I decided to try and use screencastify and record themselves reading the story or article again after they were reading with me and their group. Along with this they needed to listen to themselves reading while following along with the journal that they had read. The results so far have been fantastic. They students are very engaged and loving this activity, they are also loving the ability to listen to themselves back. I have been using this for a few weeks now and have very engaged readers in my classroom. This idea has evolved over the weeks as I reflected how it was presented to my students and this might have been too much. They were having to reflect what their reading was like which was a challenge so what I have changed it to is answering a few questions about how they thought that they read. There are examples of this in the slide deck below. One is a completed screencastify recording and the other is a completed text to type presentation.
Where to next?
I want to continue to try and use these types of activities into the reading session. One thing I am trying to start is that the learners are then able to go and listen to the story read by someone else. On TKI many of the newer school journals level 1 and 2 and junior journals have this feature. This allows the students to pick up on the words that they may have got wrong both during our guided time and their time reading and this helps confirm the new words and make sure they are reading them correctly. This is another activity that they are enjoying. This is meaning that the learners are exposed to the text in three different ways and they are always needed to use the journal to follow along. This is something that I will continue to work for the rest of the term and into next term. Other work ons are to complete my site where the students can have access and these extra activities. I would like to have this ready for my learners to be working on by the end of this term. So watch this space!
