Cool and Useful Website: Newsela

Today's Common Core State Standards emphasize the need for students to be able to read and understand informational text. Finding informational text for the varied reading levels of students can be challenging. Newsela is an awesome website that gives you access to hundreds of leveled news articles that are updated every day. Articles are available for reading levels from 3rd grade up to 12th grade.

Each high interest article is rewritten at four different Lexile reading levels, as well as the original article. Students can take a short quizzes associated with the different Lexile levels to assess their comprehension. If they struggle with the quiz or find it too easy, they can read the story at a lower or higher Lexile level. Because all students are reading the same material, teachers can lead class discussions on the article topics with all students, no matter what their reading level.

Teachers can sign up for a free account. There is a Pro account available with more features. Once signed in, teachers can create classes. Each class comes with a unique code, which students use to create their own account and join the class. No email is necessary for students!

Teachers can browse through the articles and select passages to assign to their students. Teachers can browse articles on the main page or look through the categories across the top of the screen. Teachers can also search by grade level, alignment to CCSS, or available quizzes. Once the teacher finds an article, they click the button to assign it to the class binder.

Student then log in to their account and read the article. If there is an accompanying quiz, they can take the quiz. Teachers can create current events worksheets to assess student comprehension. Here is an example, as well as many other examples on Pinterest.

Students are also able to make their own reading choices, searching for and selecting articles to read that interest them. The progress on these self sections are also available for the student and teacher to see.

As an added bonus, every article and quiz can be printed. This is great for situations where students have limited or no access to the internet. These printed articles could also be shown under a document camera to practice whole grope close reading strategies.

Download my Tech Integration Challenge for Newsela and see if you are up to the challenge!

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Cool and Useful Website: PurposeGames

Students love to play games online. The problem with most games teachers find online is that they are not perfectly suited to the material presented in class or adequately address the topics students need to master. PurposeGames is a website teachers can use to create their own games that covers all the material they want or need.

The easiest way to get started is to simply go straight to the site, choose a game and start playing. Registration is not required to play the public games.

Creating an account is easy and free. After creating an account teachers will be able to create a few different kinds of games, any of which can be based on a picture uploaded through the website.

• Quiz Game (dots) Create an image based quiz game using dots. Just upload an image, place dots for questions. 
• Quiz Game (shapes) Create an image based quiz game drawing your own areas, using shapes instead of dots. Upload an image and get started.
• Multiple-Choice Game

With an account teachers can also create groups and invite students to join their group. This is a perfect way to let classes practice, get assignments and take tests!

Teachers and students can also create playlists to keep their favorite games in one location.

Teachers can also create tournaments within their group. This lets students play agains each other to see who knows the material better.

Playing games is an excellent way for students to practice material and determine mastery of content. Let me know in the comments when you create your games so I can check them out.

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Formative Assessment Toolbox: FlipQuiz

FlipQuiz is a site that allow teachers to create Jeopardy-style quiz boards for test reviews or game nights. Teachers can sign up for FREE and create as many boards as needed. The boards can then be presented in front of a group of students to review for a test or practice mastery of content.

You can view an example of a FlipQuiz board at http://flipquiz.me/demo or check out boards other teachers have created at http://flipquiz.me/boards/recent.

The pro version has a few additional features that would make it worth the subscription price:

• Team scoring for up to 10 teams
• Image upload to answer cards
• Copy other user's quiz boards
• Create flash cards
• Set boards to private
• Set custom points

Creating a board is super easy. Click the New Board button from the dashboard or My Boards screen. Fill in a name for the board at the top of the screen. You can change the category names, and enter the questions and answers.

Once your board is complete, you can click the Presentation View to play the game. Boards can also be embedded on a webpage for easy access by students.

One of the great features in Presentation mode is the ability to set a countdown timer. In the bottom right corner click the clock icon. Just type in the number of seconds you want to count down and hit start. When the clock strikes 0, you'll see a flash of color to know that time is up! You can also check the "AUTO" box to let the countdown begin and end automatically as you choose questions.

I'm excited at the possibilities of this tool to help teachers check for understanding. If you use it, please let me know how it worked for you in the comments below! 

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Formative Assessment Toolbox: Plickers

Plickers is a classroom response app that teachers can use very easily without having devices for each student. Each student is assigned a card (printed from the website) with a unique shape on it. The teacher then uses a smartphone app to scan the cards and view student responses. Responses can also be displayed in real time from the website.

Plickers is entirely free. You will need to download the free app for your smartphone in order to scan the cards. The cards can be downloaded from the website and come in sets of 40. They can be laminated or printed on card stock for durability.

How It Works

1.  Login with or create your free Plickers account.
2.  Click the Classes tab and create a new class or modify the Default Class.
3.  Open the class and type in student names. Students are automatically assigned a card number, but you can drag and drop a different number on to a student name.

4.  Click the Library tab to create questions. You can create Multiple Choice or True/False type questions. Currently there is not a way to group questions by lesson or topic. A way to get around this is to put the standard number or lesson number at the beginning of each question. Questions must be assigned to a specific class.

5.  Download the free app for your smartphone and login to your Plickers account. Select your class and the question to ask.

6. Tap the camera icon, hold your phone in portrait mode, and scan your student’s cards. Student names will color code to indicate their answer. Rescan different areas of the class until you’ve gotten all student responses.
7. Live View lets you display the current question and share real-time responses from students.

8. At this time the only Report available is a single completed poll report.

Integration Ideas

• Create an on-the-fly poll on the smartphone by tapping the + button, then the correct answer letter, and then scan the “empty” question.
• Exit questions - to gather end-of-class info for planning next day’s learning
• Quick response for in-class practice
• Vocabulary practice
• Have students create questions for projects that they are going to present and put into Plickers so that the students can assess if their classmates understood their presentation.
•  Plickers doesn’t allow pictures or math problems. Get around this by putting those in a PowerPoint and display that on the screen.

Download the Tech Integration Challenge for Plickers and see if you are up to the challenge!

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Digital Publishing Made Easy Webinar

Earlier this week I co-presented a webinar on digital publishing for K-12 teachers. My fellow presenters and I discussed why digital publishing is important in today's education. We then shared a few tools that can be used by students for digital publishing. We focused on iPads because of their flexibility and variety of tools. We also focused on web tools for those schools that don't have access to iPads.

The anchor standards from the Nevada Academic Content Standards for writing states:

Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

In kindergarten it starts out very simple.

With guidance and support from adults, explore 6. a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

As you move up the writing strand it becomes more complex in the secondary grades.

Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

From just those simple standards we can see how important digital publishing is. It allows for student creativity, engages students more than paper and pencil assignments, and provides for an authentic environment and audience.

A playback of the one hour webinar is available at this link or by clicking the picture below.

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Edmodo Mini Lessons

Showing teachers the potential of Edmodo and how easy it is to post quizzes, assignments and discussion is the beginning part of training. However, teachers sometimes find it difficult to actually use Edmodo long term or in effective ways with their students. It's always nice to hear fresh ideas on how to use Edmodo.

Edmodo has some great examples of mini-lessons they posted on their site. These are actual ideas teachers have used with their classes. Here are a few ideas from that post.

• Students write a definition for foreshadowing, watch a short film looking for evidence of foreshadowing, and then posting their observations.
• Embed examples of book trailers for students to view. Create a folder with links to resources. Have students create their own book trailer and post it on Edmodo.
• Link a video documentary or video commentary about a current or high interest event from any news magazine website. Students must then write a paragraph that either supports, opposes, or offers a new argument.

You can check out the full post at https://support.edmodo.com/home#forums/20837385-mini-lessons

I'd love to hear how you use Edmodo with your classes. Leave a comment below and let me know!

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My Goodreads Reading Challenge confession

I did it! I met my Reading Challenge and read 305 books in 2014!

Back in May I wrote about the Goodreads website for tracking books I've read. Soon after creating my account and writing that post, I discovered that Goodreads had an annual reading challenge. Knowing that I listened to books during my morning jog, read at night, and read many picture books to my kids at bedtime, I set a goal to read 300 books in 2014. I reached that goal, but now I'm wondering if it was a good or accurate goal.

I discovered a lot of positives from having such a high goal. I was constantly on the look out for picture books to read to my kids at bedtime. This goal probably motivated me to read to them more than I would have otherwise. Along the way we made new book friends, discovered authors, illustrators, and characters we loved, and explored a wide range of books. I also made sure to pick up a new book for myself each time I finished one. I rarely went a day or two without some book that I was reading.

The Elephant and Piggy books quickly became our hands down favorite books. When we visited different libraries we were always on the look out for titles we hadn't read yet. We loved looking at the inside cover illustrations to find the pigeon, from the series that introduced us to author Mo Willems. We even discovered the pigeon hiding in other books by Mo Willems.

We did several author studies because of the first book we discovered by an author (Mo Willems, Peter Brown, Amy Krause Rosenthal, David Shannon, Jan Thomas, Melanie Watt, David Wiesner)

We absolutely loved Chester by Melanie Watt. It was actually the book that prompted us to start checking out the back flap to see who the author and illustrators were. Imagine our thrill when we discovered that there was another book about Chester! We laughed all over again!

Following Papa's Song has pictures of the author's other books on the back flap. When they saw those pictures my girls insisted that I check the library website to see if we could check those books out next.

I used the Goodreads app on my phone to record the books we read and would rate them right away. My kids asked what I was doing and I explained why I gave a book the number of stars I did. More than once, after reading certain books my 2nd grader sighed and said, "Too bad we can't give 6 stars!"

Many times I would come home from the library with dozens of books and was all excited to read them to my kids right then! Sometimes they were in the mood, other times not so much. One thing I discovered, though, was that if I could corral one of my kids (usually my second grader) into letting me read a book to her, soon the others would stop whatever they were doing and join us on the couch. If someone was in a sour mood because life just wasn't fair, it usually took only a couple of pages before they were laughing and joining in on the conversation we had about the book.

At the beginning of December I still had almost 100 books to read. So I started loading up on picture books (I maxed out my library card as well as my daughter's), reading 4-5 at a time to my kindergartener. Sometimes I would read only one and then she would bring another one, and then another one, until we had read all that I had checked out from the library.

Buyer's Remorse

With all of these good experiences we had with reading, why, then, am I wondering about this goal? Several things about the experience have left me wondering if I went about it the right way.

I listen to audio books while jogging and in the car. I often have 5-6 sitting in my iTunes waiting their turn. I found myself choosing audio books that were shorter because I knew I would finish more of them. They were on my to-read list anyway and I already had them ready to sync, but I was prioritizing my reading so that I would finish books sooner and reach my goal, rather by what interested me at the moment.

In December I was in a rush to finish the final 100 books. I would check out books one day, read them, and return them to the library the next day. I believe that, by doing this, I robbed my children of the opportunity to relish books over and over. Earlier in the year I would have library books for days and days. My kids would pick them up several times to look through the pictures again or to read it to themselves. On occasion I was asked to read one more than once. But in the end, I was so rushed to check out new books that they missed out on this opportunity.

I felt rushed in the end. I was reading to meet the goal, not to purely enjoy the books. I (and my children) did enjoy the books we read. We relished them as we read and I was able to find a ton of excellent books, both because of the illustrations and because of the stories as well. There were very few that we rated three stars or less on Goodreads.

Out of the 305 books I was able to read in 2014, less than 50 were for my own personal enjoyment. Again, I read some pretty awesome books (The Ascendence Trilogy, Razorland, Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist, Maze Runner, Unbroken), but the majority were geared towards my kids. Don't get me wrong, I loved reading to my kids and I loved the quality and range of books we shared. But to reach my goal of 300 books I had to focus more on them rather than me.

2015 Challenge

I think for 2015 my new reading challenge will focus on myself. Rather than make such a high goal that forces me to rush through books, I'll make a smaller goal that allows me time to enjoy each story. I'll choose more adult books as well (Jack Reacher is on my to-read list anyway!). If I pass my goal because of the picture books I enjoy with my kids, then so be it! 60 books sounds about right! And luckily the library is open tomorrow!

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