Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Video Link -  https://bit.ly/2YygqEK I was recently asked what the best program is to record a read aloud. This got me thinking about one of my favorite read aloud follows on YouTube, Glenn Malcolm. He does  read alouds for his grandson  and posts them to YouTube. I like how his face is on the screen during the read aloud in a moveable "dot". The only program I know that can do a circle webcam like that is Loom. Luckily Loom is offering their full account  FREE (forever) to educators . I recorded the  read aloud b elow to test the program. I used a children's book that I found online in one of four places I have access to online children's books: - Hoopla Digital (offered through our local library) - cloudLibrary eBooks (offered through our local library) - Sora (our district's online library for students) -  Epic  (library website that is free for teachers to use in the classroom) dagd I could have snapped pictures of each pa...

Picture Source If you have not heard of the app Novel Effect you may want to give it a try for Read Across America Week. The free app brings popular kid's books to life by playing sound effects, music, and character's voices as you read out loud. Novel Effect works when you read aloud from the corresponding book using voice recognition. I heard about the app while attending the TCEA conference in San Antonio earlier in the month. I was recently a guest reader in a fifth grade class and decided to give it a try. I downloaded the app to both my iPhone and iPad. I looked through the list of books in the Novel Effect library of soundscapes and found a corresponding book in our school's digital library (Overdrive). If I had a hard copy of the book it would have worked as well. I then practiced at home. I had the book  (Rosie Revere Engineer) open on my laptop and the Novel Effect app open on my iPad. I also tried reading the book from my Overdrive app on my iPad...

I just discovered that ReadWorks has a highlighting and annotating feature. Game. Changer! I have always loved ReadWorks and this was the one thing I really felt it was missing. ReadWorks, a free literacy resource for teachers and students, has REALLY stepped up its game. A third grade teacher asked me to introduce it to her students, which is how I stumbled across it. There are four highlighting colors and an annotating feature. To keep students organized with the colors I used the first letter of each color to come up with a guide/anchor chart for students. Since they are new to annotating text I thought having them pick two of the four colors was an easy way to start them learning how to annotate. They can do more for extra credit. I put together a sample of what you might see when students are finished (there is a blue annotation but I couldn't fit it on the screen). If you have different ideas that might work for the colors let me know!

https://twitter.com/EpicKidsBooks/status/1002636637191327744 As a parent you can subscribe to Epic (an online digital library for children ages 12 and under) for three months for $3 total...that is an insanely great price for access to a ton of digital books for children over the summer.  There are a lot of great resources within Epic from ebooks, audiobooks, videos, and read-to-me stories. You can cancel after the three months (but don't forget to do that or you will be charged the normal monthly fee - $8 I believe). Classroom teachers can sign up for a free account but that is limited to use in the classroom only (not at home). If you are interested you have to sign up by June 12th to get the deal.

One of my favorite YouTube channels is Kidtastic TV . The channel has a ton of Disney (and other) storybooks read out loud with the words highlighted on the screen as it is being read. If you have a "Listen to Reading" center this would be a great resource for you. You should pay attention to the length of each video when considering using them. Our district does not block YouTube videos for students (they are filtered through a clean video search filter) so they can be easily incorporated into a listening center with a QR code (we use this extension in Chrome to generate quick QR Codes). If students don't have access to YouTube you can use a YouTube Downloader ( click here for instructions on a quick and easy way to download videos from YouTube). Downloaded videos can then be uploaded to a Google Drive account where you can create a QR code or get a link for students. This is definitely more time consuming, downloading and uploading speeds c...

Super excited to find out an educational article I wrote was published today in eschoolnews.com . The article was inspired by a training class I conducted during our district's summer institute. As a mom of a boy I am well versed in getting my own child to read using sneaky and underhanded ways and this article highlights a few of those I think would work in the classroom. The article was not a paying article...more of a contribution to the world of educational articles. Even though I write this blog and our district's newsletter (both of which I love to do!) it is nice to be published outside something I somewhat control. I hope you enjoy!