Bringing Your Next Read Aloud to Life

www.booktrack.com

With ISTE 2015 currently wrapping up in Philadelphia, I've been watching my Twitter feed like a hawk (check out #ISTE2015 if you haven't already). I've been gleefully taking note of all of the amazing tools I want to try, thoughts I want to ponder, and innovations I need to discuss with my colleagues!

One of the tools I recently learned about from an ISTE goer is called Booktrack. Booktrack is a free tool that lets teachers and students create a soundtrack to any book -- instantly supercharging any text!

Let me explain how this works.

Basically, there are a few ways to use Booktrack. The first is as a teacher conducting a read aloud. You can choose a book from the Booktrack library or you can upload your own book by copying and pasting (or typing) a text into the upload wizard. If you use a book from the library, the work is done for you! Your text is set to a track of music and sound effects that make your words come alive.

If you upload your own text, you can also select and add music or sound effects from Booktrack's site to help tell your story. In fact, you can even upload your own music and sounds to incorporate into your soundtrack. The site makes it extremely easy to do and allows you to test out your work before making it accessible to others.

Finally, you can upload a cover image and then when you're satisfied, you can publish your work either to your class Bookshelf, which you set up for each of your classes, or you can share it via social media, email, or embed it into your classroom website or blog.

As you read the text aloud, presumably to your class, a little arrow on the right side of the text helps you keep pace with the soundtrack. If you want, you can speed up or speed down the wpm with the click of a button depending on how quickly you read. It is entirely dramatic and adds an undeniably engaging layer to your "performance."

If you can't finish the entire read aloud in one sitting, not to worry! When you're logged in, Booktrack keeps your place and syncs across devices. Which means, you can start reading on your iPad and finish the book on your computer the next day without skipping a beat.

Students can also write their own books in any genre and publish them to Booktrack - personal narratives, autobiographies, non-fiction, how to, etc. Imagine the potential for students to publish a text during Writers Workshop, design their own cover (app smashing, anyone?), and then produce their own soundtrack to bring to life their published work. Imagine how proud parents would be at the classroom publishing party, listening to their child read aloud to a meticulously planned, complimentary soundtrack!

Booktrack is an amazing way to capture the attention of struggling readers, as well. It's new, it's exciting, and the music just might help the reader make connections and visualize the text. Simply hearing the scary music, or sounds of a basketball bouncing, or a car horn blaring, etc. certainly does help paint a vivid picture. Not to mention, can you imagine how helpful this would be when introducing mood and tone to a classroom?

Pro tip: If you're looking to upload a text but don't have time to write your own story, you might want to check out the exhaustive list of royalty free texts by the Gutenberg Project.

To Blog or Not to Blog: Increasing Engagement & Accountability Through Student Blogs

This year, I've been charged with teaching a group of scholars with intensive academic and behavior needs within my urban charter school. The scholars are dealing with a lot inside of the school, and outside of it. The Austin community in Chicago where I teach is high-poverty and riddled with gangs. Currently, I'm teaching an LRE 3 special education classroom, in which I teach all 5 core subjects to 5 different grade levels. 

Needless to say, keeping levels of engagement and collaboration high has been a priority. This task has also been really stretching my creativity! How will I keep students accountable for excellent work? How can I make our learning worthwhile? How can I give these scholars an experience that will extend beyond the classroom and help them later in life? How can I help them share their work without hanging it in the hallway, which is embarrassing for them?

Enter: KidBlog. 

I decided to use KidBlog like an online portfolio for our students. In this way, students work hard to create and fine tune their excellent work. Ultimately, they know that it will be displayed "publicly" for their parents, classmates, favorite teachers and administrators. They will also be able to view each other's work and provide appropriate, respectful feedback (a skill in itself).

Additionally, I created my own KidBlog page for our classroom. On this page, I blog about the assignment, the process and skills involved, the expected outcomes, and ways for parents to extend their learning at home through conversations and additional learning. When appropriate, I post pictures of student work and the process behind it for parents to get a glimpse into the AWESOME that is our evolving classroom. 

To share our work and make it seem extra official, I've created professional business cards. Now, students can share a link to their KidBlog with trusted adults and friends - parents, aunties and uncles, siblings, etc. all through a QR code which they can scan through any smart phone or tablet. 

On the back of each business card, I have included a QR code to my own teacher blog. Again, the purpose of my blog is so that parents can quickly scan and learn more about the projects and how to talk to their child about the topics at home. Sometimes parents need a little empowerment, too!

I've committed to connecting the experience of having a business card, running a blog, and posting comments/feedback to real life. We look at professional portfolios and blogs and we reflect about how we can make our work as professional as possible. Since all of our work ends up on the blog, students are more invested into the process, which ultimately increases engagement. This is the perfect storm that also allows me to increase rigor, as well.

There are many blogging sites that are perfect for students, but KidBlog is nice because you don't need an email address to get started and all posts can be moderated by the teacher and parent access codes can be created for safe distribution.

The downside of KidBlog is there is limited space available for free accounts. But! We'll cross that bridge we come to it.

In the mean time, happy blogging!

Graphing Our Goals!

Whew, it's been a while since I've had a spare moment to think about anything that's going well in my classroom! Mostly, I've been living in the moment & tirelessly trying to get a brand new classroom of students from Point A to Point A+.

I've been spending a great deal of my time graphing and charting pretty much every piece of our day with my students. I do this so that I have evidence of the progress that's occurring in my room, and also so that the students can celebrate their progress and self-reflect on their behavior. With the help of iPads, students can now do it all on their personal devices - saying goodbye to embarrassing, public behavior and academic goal charts.

Students start by downloading a chart template which I create, save as a PDF, and store in Google Drive. Then, students can open the chart in any PDF annotation app, such as Skitch or Noteability.

From here, students can mark up the document, save it, and share it with me! You could try Google Drive, Showbie, or even AirDrop to share daily or weekly progress with your students.

Since everything is organized in one system (in theory), these graphs are simple to share with parents - especially during student led conferences.

Here are some examples of things I graph with my students:

• Behavior - This has looked a lot of different ways for my students. From the youngest learners graphing their "color" throughout the day to older students graphing their ClassDojo points in an effort to view how close we are to earning our incentives.
• Class Averages  - Class averages are a great way to publicly celebrate growth (because they don't single anyone out), and graphing as a "team" inherently encourages teamwork - we are all working toward the same goal and we all need to grow to reach our goals. 
• Independent Reading Levels (How many levels did you grow on average?)
• CBM averages
• # of Minutes used to transition
• Silent Reading Stamina
• # of books read or conferences held
• # of published writing pieces presented
• # of compliments received by adults in the hallway

The biggest piece to graphing and tracking data is to make sure you use the information, reflect on how and why we arrived at these findings, and then create action plans for improvement. Celebrate the small victories as often as you can to keep morale high. 

Good luck and happy graphing!

10 Engaging Ways to Use iPads for Exit Tickets

Exit tickets are a quick and easy way to assess student learning in the classroom. By using them at the end of our lessons, we know if we need to reteach a few students, a group of students, or maybe go about the lesson again in a new way. On the other hand, we also know if students are demonstrating proficiency and are then ready to be challenged with more rigorous instruction or projects. The information we gain by using an exit ticket is invaluable to all teachers.

Traditionally, exit tickets are a post it, an index card, a tally on a clipboard, or even a simple thumbs up/down. But... they can be so much more!

Here are 10 engaging ways to use an iPad to create a useful exit ticket.

1. Camera. The camera is a useful and often overlooked tool because it's not an "app" that we seek out. Cameras can capture students modeling a skill or task, they can capture an illustration drawn by students, or a specific area or place. Students can then post their images to a classroom blog (check out Edublog), Dropbox, or Instagram. From here, students can discuss, debate, analyze or explain the other photos in the classroom. To challenge students, you might even allow other groups to explain why another image is relevant instead of allowing the photographer to explain themselves.

2. Geddit. Teachers can set up check in questions that can be shared with students at any time to informally assess their understanding. This is perfect for exit tickets and more periodic check-ins throughout the lesson. Students can also be asked to check in with Geddit and simply rate their level of comfort with the material being presented at any given point during a lesson with just a click of the app. The teacher, then, can see an overview of how the class is doing and make decisions about whether the group is ready to move on or not. All of the information collected on Geddit can be exported into an Excel template and saved or shared at a later date.

3. Kahoot! Kahoot! provides a game-based approach to assessing student knowledge. The teacher sets up a review game with multiple choice answers. When students access the review from their device, it acts like a buzzer. As the teacher goes through each of the questions, students buzz in and earn points for both accuracy and speed. The top 5 scores are shown on the main screen for additional motivation, however all student scores are collected for the teacher to analyze and use.

4. Vine. Have students create a vine to capture what they know in a video in 6.5 seconds or less. They can be silly, serious, or simple. Kids love having choices in the way they express themselves.

5. Twitter. Twitter is a great way for students to capture a succinct main idea for what was learned that day. Since you are only allowed 140 characters, it's a great way to narrow your focus into the main idea. Create a classroom Twitter page so that each student is able to share with you directly.

6. Blabberize. This silly app allows students to choose an avatar (like a camel, for instance) and then record themselves speaking about the main idea of the day's lesson or an answer to a proposed question. The app then uses the voice to make the avatar talk. It's hilarious, fun, and to the point.

7.  Today's Meet. Any back channel app is great for ongoing conversation within a classroom, however, students are also able to discuss and participate with eachother as part of an exit ticket. Teachers have control over when these discussions take place and you can even save the discussions for analyzing later on.

8. Padlet. Padlet is an online cork board. Teachers can propose questions and students can post their answer to Padlet. Since the background can be customized, you can use Padlet as a KWL, a calendar, or even assign everyone's name or picture to a grid. Students can then save their thinking to their own square on the Padlet board for a quick assessment of who has participated and who has not. (See image attached.)

9. Blend Space. Blend Space is an online portfolio, which could serve as a mini assessment or a more detailed show of a student's work. Students can add many different types of media, labels, text, etc to share what they know about a topic or theme.

10.  Educreations. Educreations is a great tool for allowing students to show what they know. They can literally become the teacher by writing on the "white board" screen and recording their voice. The lesson can be saved and sent to the teacher as an exit slip. (These same videos also serve as wonderful reteaching centers which are being taught, then, by peers instead of the teacher!)

Admiration & Joy Project

Student-driven iPad Project Sparks School-wide Community Building

Community has always played a big role in my thinking when it comes to education. A wise instructional coach once started our coaching year by asking, "What do you want your classroom to feel like?" I immediately erupted with warm and fuzzy adjectives... loving, empowered, inspired, fair, collaborative, safe, etc. Of course, this is an educators dream. But how do you tackle such high hopes in just a year?

Educators are constantly working against the grain. What goes on at home might not mirror what we hope will happen in the classroom. For example, in my classroom (and in my school) we empower students to use their words to express their feelings by using an "I message." Sounds a little granola to some parents, but it shouldn't have to be. No one is a mind-reader at home or at school, so expressing ourselves with words is productive and helpful. But, teaching families and students how to "use their words appropriately" takes time.

Time. There's never enough of it.

Formulating a Plan

So, how would I tackle all of this? Why was it so important to me? I realized part of the reason it was so important is because it feels so good when these traits are present in your space and I sincerely wanted my students' education and our time together to feel "right" so that my students loved learning. I sincerely feel that one teacher can spark the flame of a life-long learner. I wanted to spark that flame for each of my students... and maybe some students who were not even my students.

I knew that first I needed to help my students know why this community was so important and help them quickly understand how wonderful a loving, trusting, respectful, collaborative community could feel. So, I launched the Admiration & Joy project. And, it took off...

The First Steps

At the time, I was teaching first grade and as you may know, first graders rush through everything.They want to be first in line. First to recess. And, first to be done with every assignment. As a result, our work looked messy and our bulletin boards just didn't seem to represent the quality, rigorous learning I knew was taking place. In other grades, the work represented on bulletin boards seemed so...well? Pretty. 

I decided to bring my students on a tour of the school. We tackled one classroom at a time, observing the work of their peers. We brought clipboards and an observation sheet and spent some quality time sitting silently in the hallway in front of excellent work, simply observing everything that made it excellent. We didn't tell anyone we were doing this. It was our own little experiment. We drew about it, we wrote about it, and then we went back into the classroom and discussed it. The students were so excited to shout out about what they had observed. The room was erupting with admiration and joy... and I knew we were only scratching the surface.

Project Details

The last part of the observation sheet asks students to prepare a shout out and provides a few sentence starters. Students were asked to think carefully about all the reasons the work of their peers was truly excellent.

After they crafted their shout outs, a student recorded each of us talking about the excellent work we observed on our neighbor's bulletin board. They were saying things like, "Your work is excellent because you used a lot of detail." and "Your work is excellent because your creative ideas made me laugh out loud!" The smiles on their faces, though, told a bigger piece of the story.

Our community was... happy!

Giving Wings to Our Joy

Once the video recordings were complete, we worked as a class to choose a handful of videos to put into Animoto. Once our video was set, we had a red carpet viewing party of our class creation... complete with popcorn and "VIP seats." What happened next surprised me... the 'oohs and ahhs' of the video turned into compliments within our own classroom. I began hearing, "Your shout out was excellent because..." and "I love the way you..." from within our four walls. There were high fives galore after our video ended and my heart was full.

Without a doubt, we had achieved collaboration, teamwork, and respect.

A School-wide Success

We presented our video gift to our neighboring classroom... and our community grew. Soon, we had friends in other classrooms. And just as I had hoped, students in other classrooms were feeling our admiration and joy just by proximity to our project! So much so, that we were surprised and excited to have received a shout out video back from our neighbors. Our school was buzzing with admiration and joy projects as classrooms across grade levels began presenting each other with similar videos and projects. Not only that, but all of our work started becoming just a little more excellent and we weren't shy about talking about it.

We were connected. We were a community. It didn't take much time!

Please follow me on Twitter @KSoroko