A Delicious Way to End (or Kick off) The School Year:Building Community with Class Anthologies

Students  want to take an active role in their world. They want to be involved in real things and have their voices heard. Creative projects offer students a platform to engage with their world and make statements, have the opportunity to present to real audiences,  draw reactions, and gain feedback from those audiences as well. 

In my 8th grade English Language Arts classroom students read short stories and texts around the topic of identity. After reading a handful of short stories from authors like Sandra Cisneros, Toni Cade Bambara, Esmerelda Santiago, Gary Soto, and Amy Tan, to name a few. After our close reading, analysis, and reflections students do some exploration and research into their identity and diverse cultures. Students are provided with a choice board to select a culminating writing assignment that is compiled in an anthology with Book Creator. 

When students know that they have the opportunity to make a statement that will be heard, it can bring a highly focusing, motivating, and potentially satisfying  aspect to learning. Each of the activities on the choice board results in the student producing an authentic learning product curated in a class anthology. Choice boards embrace student voice, choice, and agency.

Student Authors with Book Creator

A key focus of our active learning and critical thinking classroom is that the student produces as part of the

learning experience. As students create their learning products, they are researching, communicating, writing, speaking and listening. To showcase our creative works students writing is compiled in a class anthology using Book Creator.  Book Creator helps facilitate the sharing process and collaboration is easy when students add their writing to our class anthology. Students know their finished products will be shared with their families and the school community and this makes a meaningful learning experience.

This unit and activities are meant to celebrate students’ diverse cultures and heritage. When students share their photos, memoirs, and dishes they can begin to appreciate all the richness in all of our cultures and can find similarities among us. This helps to help create an classroom and school environment where students feel their voices and stories matter. 

The Epic Ebook of Web Tools & Apps

GET A FIRST LOOK AT THE EPIC EBOOK OF WEB TOOLS & APPS, A FREE CROWDSOURCED RESOURCE BY EDUCATORS FOR EDUCATORS!

I am so excited to have collaborated on this ebook that is filled with so many web tools and apps that educators can access for blended and student centered learning. Created on Bookcreator, this awesome collaborative project includes descriptions of each tool, ways to utilize it in the classroom, screenshots and videos to get started. There are so many excellent tools and resources to help all teachers make the most of edtech in their classrooms.

Get your copy of the Epic Ebook of Web Tools & Apps View the recording of the release party sponsored by the NJASL (New Jersey Association of School Librarians) for sponsoring this event.

My pages in the ebook cover the digital reading platform Actively Learn. Below are screenshots of the pages I created and included in the ebook.

This digital reading platform Actively Learn offers a catalog of articles and texts suitable for elementary and secondary students. You can assign texts for your students to read as well as embed questions, polls and writing assessments throughout the reading. You can also embed media and hyperlinks in the text to help guide student reading and thinking.

Another benefit of Actively Learn is that it offers not only pre-made reading lessons with questions aligned to cited Common Core State Standards, but also the ability to upload your own text and create customized reading assignments for students. If a student doesn’t know the meaning of a word, right-clicking on the word brings up a menu where the student can choose to see a definition, translate the word or hear the word read aloud.

Because Actively Learn lets students translate the text into different languages or hear it read aloud, ELL students can read in their native languages and struggling students get help with text comprehension.

Customizing assignments with a digital platform like Actively Learn leads to more effective and independent instruction that targets students’ strengths and weaknesses by giving support to students that need it, while omitting it for those who don’t.

 

 

 

5 Ways to Kickoff the School Year with BookCreator

Book Creator is a simple tool for creating awesome digital books. Users combine text, images, audio and video to create stories, portfolios, comic adventures, and more. With the simple to use tool bar and page templates, students are authors and can share their creations with a wide audience. There are a variety of ideas for using book creator across grade level and content areas on their website.

Here are five ways I plan to use Bookcreator to kick off the new school year:

1. Create a teaching manual for parents and students. Consider posting your syllabus as a comic adventure using bitmojis to articulate the responsibilities, expectations, and objectives in the classroom. As a middle school teacher, I work with a team of teachers across content areas and I am making a “Team 8R” manual for parents and students to help them navigate blended learning in 8th grade.
2. Start off the new year with a look book of all your students. What better way to get to know your students then by creating a collaborative book with the students in your classroom. Allow students to create their own two page spread showcasing their interests, spirit animal, favorite books, music, and movies. Provide a suggested list of ways students can design their pages and get to know the students in your classroom.
3. Summer Reading . . . okay, this is the English teacher in me and a ways to get to know your students as readers. Then this book becomes a catalogue of book recommendations, inspiration, and reviews. Students can write a book synopsis, review, and even compare the book vs. the movie or cast the best actors to play the characters they read about.

4. The comic book features on Bookcreator are easy to use and allow for creative storytelling. Students can create a comic book about their summer adventures or retell a story. Students choose the page templates, fonts, and can even use the stickers and speech bubbles to convey the theme of their story. 

5.  Guidebooks and How-To books are really helpful if we are going to be teaching remotely, you can insert a video or audio directions how to get organized with Google Classroom the start of the school year or maybe you are using a new web platform and you want to help students set up the digital platform and access it with ease, creating a guide book that students can easily access is helpful for students and parents.

There are so many ways to use Bookcreator in the classroom. Check out the Big Book Creator Activity Book for more great ideas and inspiration.