Digital Language Arts V: “When I Grow Up…”

Continuing the last thread of using career roleplaying as a vehicle for authentic application and assessment of reading and writing skills, we present a few more ideas that leverage technology tools to serve as creative outlets for students. Keep in mind it all starts with high-quality reading material – students must be engaged with something interesting, relevant, and illustrative in order to bring out the passion and desire to produce/create/comment. It makes no sense to give a creative, technology-rich assignment to students that have no interest in the prompt material. Fire up their interest and they’ll fire up their effort!

Idea 1: Poem recitation (professional poet)

Standing up and reciting a poem of their own hand can be an embarrassing experience for students. They are sometimes hesitant to engage in the social risk of putting a voice to their own thoughts and emotions live and in front of their peers. However, technology may offer hope here. You can task students with using audio recorders for their recitations. These may take the form of dedicated hardware such as iPods with microphones or inexpensive mp3 recorders, or you may use computers with audio recording software such as the free Audacity or the built-in recorders for Windows and Mac OS X. In any of these cases, students have the ability to play back what they’ve recorded. This is essential in getting them to become more and more expressive over time; they can re-record until they are satisfied with their tone, pronunciation, rhythm, and so on. Further, when they hear their own words read aloud, they are more likely to go back and edit for greater clarity, and, as appropriate, different rhyme schemes. And perhaps inexplicably, having their recorded file played for the class may well be a source of pride to them, rather than embarrassment – having had the chance to perfect their recitation means there is far less fear of perceived incompetence. Bonus points go to teachers that find a means to post the audio files online for a greater audience to access.

Idea 2: Investigative journalism

Many students love to find out the whys of controversial issues that they care about it, whether in a large social context or near and dear to their daily lives. They may become passionate about the deteriorating environment in their neighborhood, the choice and healthfulness of the food served in the cafeteria, or the children exposed to violence on a daily basis in war-torn regions. A greater teacher will tap into and feed such passion through the selection of reading material that helps students come to deeper understandings and that offers interesting and diverse perspectives. Having been engaged with such material, students can take on the roles of investigative journalists through the creation of video reports or documentaries. Working in groups, student teams can be tasked with researching additional material to supplement their class readings, can interview key figures associated with the issue, and can produce a compelling video statement that brings everything together with their own particular conclusions. Skills of research, writing, and interviewing are combined with creativity, editing, and self-presentation. As was mentioned before, bundled video-editing software such as Windows Movie Maker and iMovie offer very powerful tools for such work.

Idea 2.5: Point/counterpoint debate

Using the same overall outline as above, students can create a video point/counterpoint debate of an issue instead of a report or documentary. This allows for divergent viewpoints in the working group to both be supported and acknowledged, and offers the further benefit of increasing the analytical thinking skills of students as each side attempts to trump the other’s arguments.

Idea 3: Multimedia newsletters

Many issues in our world are relevant and interesting to students without being controversial. Ask any student about pop culture – music, movies, video games, etc. – and they’re likely to surpise you with how much passion and insight they have. Since passion is one key to highly effective learning, why not tap into that? Task students with creating multimedia newsletters that inform and educate others about such topics. Students will exercise their writing skills not in the essay format, but in a variety of ways to persuade, inform, comment, and critique. By bringing in multimedia elements such as video clips, images, sounds and music, students gain more practice with the integration of media that is a hallmark of our current society. Tools such as Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, or Apple Pages offer options, as well as do online tools such as Glogster.

Digital Language Arts IV: “Why Do We Have To Do This?”

One way to think about authentic work and authentic assessment is to frame them in the context of allowing students to roleplay in various careers. By doing so, students can learn to see their work in the context of the larger world, can better understand connections between disciplines, and can combine knowledge and skills from different areas of their school experience. They will also become more engaged and can even help engage their peers.

Consider the ideas below. Each can be used for assessment, review, or practice. Each involves reading and writing skills. Each can be posted online for various purposes, whether for review, for commenting by a larger audience, or as a showcase.

Idea 1: Recorded interviews of characters

How can students demonstrate that they understand a character’s outlook, motivations, and experiences in a novel? Have pairs of students write and perform an interview between an outside observer and a character from the material. The interviews can then be recorded as podcasts or in video form using such tools as Audacity, Garage Band, Movie Maker, or iMovie. Be sure to emphasize to students that someone that has never read the novel should be able to learn all of the most important insights about the character from the interview. For advanced work, students can write multiple interviews of the same character from different times in the novel, each representing a different part of their character arc. The interviews of different pairs of students, each from the same novel, can be collected and hosted online so that all students can use them as review material.

Idea 2: Multimedia advertisements for a novel

Students generally understand material when they are able to effectively entice other students to read it. Let students act as advertising executives by having them create multimedia advertisements for a novel. These might come in the form of radio commercials, television commercials, movie trailers, or kiosk-style presentations. Plot, theme, characters, and other important elements should be addressed by the advertisements. In addition to the software tools above, students can use Photo Story, PowerPoint, Keynote, Glogster, or VoiceThread.

Idea 3: Interactive sequels to novels

If you grew up in the 80s… or maybe even if you didn’t… you surely remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. These engaging books allowed readers to make decisions that affected the plot – go through a door to face a magical dragon head-on, or circle around to retrieve a golden sword. The concept is perfectly suited to the electronic interactive tools available to students today. Have students become authors by creating a sequel to a novel wherein they take the main character and lead him or her through various further experiences. Using the technique of linking in such tools as PowerPoint, SMART Notebook, or any webpage editor, students can create multiple if-then decision points. Emphasize to students that they should write the character in ways that demonstrate that they understand the character’s outlook, motivations, and prior experiences, just as in the interviews above. For advanced work, students can include audio or links to external resources such as Google Earth to make their work even more engaging.

These three ideas are merely a snowflake on the tip of a huge iceberg. We’ll present more ideas for authentic application and assessment. Stay tuned.

Digital Language Arts III: “I Reflect, Therefore I Am”

Practice, reflection, and analysis. The heart of the matter… can you provide students with opportunities to digest and process your instruction? It is in the acts of practicing, reflecting, and analyzing that students can build connections to prior material, can try out new modes of understanding, and can play with concepts mentally in such a way as to decide what makes sense and what doesn’t as well as what prior understandings need to be modified or discarded. Metaphorically, they pick up new ideas off the ground, mentally experiment with them, and then either throw them away if the experiments fail or put them in their pocket for safe keeping if the experiments succeed.

In traditional language arts instruction, these acts might manifest as some of the following: journal writing, student-led read-alouds, responding orally or in writing to teacher prompts, essay writing, or recitation of personal stories that students use to connect to the material. Each certainly can have value in refining student understanding… but each may also present a motivational hurdle to overcome with students. Technology integration can help! Let’s return to our two guiding questions. How can I improve what I do? What can I do that I couldn’t before?

Idea 1: Providing electronic means for journal writing and prompt responses

Web 2.0 tools such as those found at ThinkQuest can help motivate students to reflect meaningfully and to increase the quality of those reflections. Consider letting students blog about what they’re reading and how it relates to their life experiences – you’ll be surprised at how much more effort they’re willing to put into writing when a) it’s electronic and b) they know people besides their teacher will be reading it. And don’t limit each student to just writing their own reflection – let them comment on others’ reflections, too! They’ll constructively criticize the work of peers, thereby getting valuable implicit practice at evaluating their own future writing.

For the instances when there isn’t time for students to write full blog reflections, try using a message board or your own blog to pose prompts to students. Task each student with responding to you as well as to one other responding student. You can easily make this a daily activity with just a few computers in a classroom. Each student can have five to ten minutes to write quick responses. Just remember that the point here is not to evaluate the structure and grammar of their writing, but to help them flesh out their ideas through communication with others.

The activities above also provide a good context in which to teach ‘netiquette’ – responsible and respectful online behavior. Students that write insulting or inappropriate comments will quickly be called out by their peers since everyone will be reading everyone else’s words. With just a few simple netiquette rules established by the teacher and students together, inappropriate online behavior will drop to a minimum. You may also find that students are much more likely to complete their reflective homework assignments if they’re online!

Idea 1.5: Turning journal writing into journal speaking

If the primary goal of reflective journaling is to give students opportunities to, well, reflect, then certainly it need not always manifest itself in writing. Try letting students create voice recordings of their reflections instead. Using Audacity is a quick and easy way to generate MP3 recordings of student voices, and these files can be posted to websites such as ThinkQuest… where other students can still write comments. This method is generally faster than student blogging and so you can cycle your students through similar reflective experiences in less time and with fewer resources consumed. Websites such as VoiceThread offer fully-online options that don’t require software beyond a web browser.

Idea 2: Recording student-led read-alouds

Teachers, students, and parents all need to know that progress is being made when it comes to the fluency, speed, and accuracy of oral reading in students. This can be hard to recognize in the day-to-day grind of a long year. But consider – if you had audio recordings of your students reading different texts at various points in the year, you could not only make long-range comparisons quickly and easily, but could also share them with parents (and students!) to demonstrate the level of progress achieved. All you need is a microphone, a recording device, and speakers. The recordings can be created and catalogued using a computer and software such as Audacity, iTunes, and Windows Media Player, or on MP3 players such as iPods with voice-recording attachments. Many non-Apple MP3 players have voice-recording capabilities built-in, and are very inexpensive. Instead of sending parents a copy of a student’s most recent Running Record, why not E-mail them an MP3 file instead?

Idea 3: Developing writing process skills electronically

Word processing is not the end-all be-all when it comes to students writing using computers. With today’s tools you can help students develop writing skills by letting them practice writing models electronically. Consider such models as POWER, 4-Square, and others. They usually involve brainstorming, the organization of ideas into a coherent structure, the writing of a draft, editing, and then re-writing with final edits in place. Graphic organizer software such as Inspiration or Kidspiration makes brainstorming not only easy but more importantly easily editable in such forms as bubble maps or tree diagrams. Students may toss out a million ideas, but the software interface allows them to react to their own brainstorming by culling unneeded ideas and applying some sense of initial organization that would be entirely impractical on paper.

Taking the best ideas and putting them into a coherent structure that supports the writing of their first draft can be a challenge for some students. They may not easily see which ideas deserve their own paragraphs and which ideas should support others as details within paragraphs. The Kidspiration 4-Square writing template on this site can help! Students fill in the big ideas and the supporting details in the boxes, and then switch to the writing view where what they typed is automatically organized into a form resembling a four-paragraph draft. They can then flesh out the ideas further by rewriting the ideas and details into sentences. The color-coding and the ability to switch back and forth between the visual organizer and the writing view helps them develop the mental connection needed for more independent writing in the future. Throw in the fact that Kidspiration even supports voice-recording, useful for when students need to hear what they wrote in order to improve it, and you may come to realize that it is an immensely powerful tool for building the writing skills of your students.

Idea 4: Building analytical thinking skills through cooperative electronic tools

For decades educators have been advised that they need to teach critical thinking skills to their students. But how, exactly? Have you ever found a practical, efficient, and effective way to do that? Hopefully you have! But if not, may we humbly but enthusiastically recommend that you try out Intel Education’s Thinking Tools. They may very well be the best things since sliced bread!

The Visual Ranking Tool lets teams of students take a pre-defined set of elements – ideas, details, characters, events, processes, issues, just about anything you can think of – and rank them according to some pre-defined criteria. Seems simple enough… but how does that involve critical thinking and analysis? Just wait… Teams must justify the ranking of each element with an explanation. And it is in that one little twist that a simple top 10 list becomes an exercise in reflection, analysis, persuasion, and compromise (remember, they’re working in teams.) But it’s still not over. Each team can compare its set of rankings visually with any other team’s, or with the average rankings of the entire class – a ready-made opportunity for lively debate. The tool is easy enough to use even in the primary grades, but powerful enough to be valuable even at the college level. And through the practice of discussion, element ranking, justification, defense, and debate, students implicitly develop critical thinking skills. Just imagine how anything important that you want to stress from a novel or other ready material can be addressed with this tool. Oh, and did we mention that since it’s online, they can work on it anywhere with Internet access?

The Showing Evidence Tool is the sophisticated doctoral candidate to the freshman undergrad that is the Visual Ranking Tool. Maybe you’re skeptical and still don’t buy the supposed power of ranking elements. Try this on for size, then: What if you had a tool that led students through the process of reading a pre-defined claim or position, gathering evidence for and against that claim, annotating the evidence with its sources, evaluating the strength of each piece of evidence added to the for and against sides of the claim, and coming to a final conclusion based on the preponderance of that evidence? What if the tool allowed students to reach conclusions based not on intuition, emotions, or surface-level understandings, but instead based on careful analysis of different sides of an issue, supported by accurate and relevant evidence? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we were all good at that, let alone our students?

So you’re thinking, ‘Sounds like writing a research paper. Students hate that!’ Quite possibly they do. But they won’t hate the Showing Evidence Tool. It’s graphical. It’s team-oriented. It’s easily editable. It’s online. And it looks nothing like a writing assignment. Yes, it’s more complicated and more involved than the Visual Ranking Tool. But it’s still easy enough for elementary students to use adeptly. Challenge your students with it and they will rise to the occasion.

In our next entry we’ll dive into the incredibly rich and diverse world of technology tools that allow students to apply their learning in meaningful, authentic ways.

A Novel Approach To Instruction

We’ve been asked just what kinds of reading material may be best suited to the kinds of creative, communicative, and authentic projects in which we expect our elementary students to be engaged. From one perspective, all kinds of reading material can provide adequate depth for the learning of skills and ideas for which we aim to provide. And in fact, variety is essential – fiction and non-fiction, article and story, poem and essay – students need to work with all manner of material for a well-rounded experience.

We have an affection for novels in particular, though. In using a novel in language arts instruction, one can bring virtually every reading skill into play. Furthermore, a novel can be fertile ground for allowing students to connect the material to their own lives in reflective and meaningful fashions – and those connections, incidentally, allow students to become more engaged in writing exercises. Students will read and write with more passion and more effort if they feel connected to the material. For those reasons and more, novels form the basis of most of the units that the DLA team has implemented in the past.

Here are a few recommendations for novels to use in upper elementary language arts instruction:

• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
  
• Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
  
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
  
• Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
  
• The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
  
• The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo
  

Because the tools and practices we recommend allow for individual work and team work, and do not in any way require whole-class projects, one can easily use multiple novels at one time in such a way that matches the challenge of the material to the relative reading levels of individual students. Students can use ThinkQuest, the Intel Thinking Tools, and Glogster during the same unit, for example, even if they are reading different novels. In this manner one can differentiate to meet all needs.

Have you used other novels successfully at the elementary level? We’d love to hear about them!

Digital Language Arts II: “Guide Me, Please”

Bedtime stories. Did you grow up with them? Did you have the opportunity to be read to by, and to read along with, a caring family member? Were you asked, “What’s that word?” Did you ask, “What does that word mean?” Curiosity for stories and language never really leaves us, but sometimes it gets buried under the weight of unengaging school instruction. Do you ever recall telling your mom, “Can you stop reading this story to me, please? It’s boring and I’d really rather do something else.” Hopefully not! Perhaps you can recall, though, thinking as much in one or more of your classrooms while growing up.

As we think about how we engage in the act of guided reading – reading to our students, having our students read to us, and discussing elements such as tone, style, theme, grammar, vocabulary, point of view, and so on – we can use our two overarching questions (How I can I improve what I do? What can I do that I couldn’t before?) to frame our understanding of how we might integrate technology into the process.

Idea 1: Delivering electronic anticipation guides via student response systems

Before tackling new reading material of any significant depth, whether fiction or non-fiction, it is useful to gauge student understandings of the ideas they will encounter in the material, as well as to pique their curiosity. This can be done with (ugh) a worksheet questionnaire, or perhaps through a class discussion. The former may turn you off as much as your students. The latter can be extremely powerful. But how can we make it better? How can we benefit from engaging in discussion and yet still record the data as with a worksheet? And how can we increase engagement at the same time? We can use electronic student response systems in the context of the discussion. For The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco, for example, we can anticipate the story by asking, “Would you risk your life to help a friend in danger?” and using a Likert-scale answer format on the student response systems. Students answer, discuss, and then proceed to the next question.

After we have finished reading the book, we can ask the same questions from the anticipation guide and record their answers using the response systems as well. We then compare the responses, pre- and post-reading, for a fruitful discussion on how and why student attitudes and responses may have changed. Having the data in electronic format makes it fast and easy.

Idea 2: Annotating text with a document camera, projector, and interactive whiteboard

Each student in a guided reading group may have their own copy of the reading material, but how do students comment on specific portions of the text? How does the teacher, for that matter? Does student Molly say, “On the 27th line, halfway through, Sarah points at the vase and…” Does the teacher say, “Jason, find three adjectives in the fifth paragraph…” while the other students struggle to follow along? Perhaps so, but those methods can be terribly awkward at times. We can improve the analytical process, while again increasing engagement, by using the tools above to show the pages of the material, live, large, and in color, on an interactive whiteboard. Molly can user her finger or a board pen to draw a circle around the text as she explains her point about Sarah. Jason can likewise highlight his three adjectives so that every student knows exactly which ones he identifies. And if he makes a mistake? No problem. The group can ask him to “erase” one highlight, and replace it with another. These simple acts of physical interaction can go a long way towards reinforcing the ideas in students’ minds. And with some models of document cameras and boards, images of the pages with the student annotations can be saved for later reference in class and at home through online posting.

Idea 3: Supporting teachable moments through just-in-time web research

Almost without fail, at some point while reading together in a guided reading group, students will ask questions about ideas, topics, or words that they do not understand. In some cases, the teacher knows and can explain the answers, and in some cases not. But what may be the best way to handle it? The teacher can say, “I don’t know… let’s Google it!*” By having just one computer available right in the group, whether a teacher laptop, student laptop, or even a nearby desktop, questions can be researched and resolved on the spot, while student curiosity is still high. And in as much as the answer itself is important, so too is the act of modeling digital literacy in context. “We’ve got three million responses, guys… what can we do to narrow the results?” “Do you think this website looks like we can trust it? Why?” “Does this first answer seem reasonable, or should we keep looking?” Each of those questions can be used by the teacher to build effective web research habits in students without them even realizing it. And in that one simple change in practice, by integrating one simple technology tool, we are able to accomplish what we could not accomplish in the group otherwise.

*DLA team member Nicole’s favorite in-class phrase

So, there we have three simple ideas for improving what we do, or for allowing ourselves to do more, in the guided reading process by way of technology integration. Do you have other ideas for guided reading enhancements? We’ve love to have you share!

Next up… we’ll take a brief detour to mention some of our favorite novels to use in elementary language arts, and then return to this multi-part series for a look at how to integrate technology into practice/reflection/analysis.

Digital Language Arts I: “Just What’s The Big Idea?”

Digital language arts… just what in the world is it all about, and what part can it play in modern education? It’s a simple, intuitive concept – using technological tools to aid reading and writing instruction. To aid. Not to supplant, but to support. Not to replace, but to revitalize. It’s not about teaching technology, it’s about teaching with technology.

The classical elements of language arts instruction are classical for a reason – because they work! Guide students through reading and writing processes, give them opportunities to practice, reflect upon, and analyze their reading and writing habits, let them apply their learning for constructive purposes, and assess their proficiency and progress. Wash, rinse, repeat.

For each of those elements – guidance, practice/reflection/analysis, application, and assessment – a 21st century educator can ask two important questions. 1) How can technological tools help me improve the way I already address those elements? 2) How can technological tools help me address those elements in ways that would not otherwise be possible? Digital language arts, as a concept, revolves around those two questions and their possible answers.

Students want to be engaged. They want to be excited. They want to communicate. They want to put their knowledge and skills to productive and authentic use. They want to be taught. They really do. Really! But you’ve got to “come correct.” And part of that means taking advantage of the amazing breadth of technological tools that modern educators have at their disposal. They’ll bend over backwards to read for you, write for you, and learn for you. If you meet them halfway…

Next up in this multi-part series, we’ll dive into practical implementation ideas for integrating technological tools into guided reading. Stay tuned!