Online Resources for Nonfiction Reading with English Learners

Image credit: http://discovernonfiction.weebly.com/

One of my absolute favorite things is working with students on nonfiction reading and writing.......

It is so awesome to see how excited they get about learning new things....when the topics are interesting to them and the resources are at their reading level.

When I use nonfiction reading resources with students, I follow an inquiry model to help set a purpose for our interactions with the text:

• questioning
• researching
• discussing
• creating
• reflecting

Image credit: http://www.uvm.edu/~jmorris/preview/
Inquiryprocess.jpg

I also do a lot of modeling the steps in the inquiry process:

• How do I write a question?
• What should my questions be about?
• How do I read a nonfiction text?
• How do I take notes from nonfiction text?
• What do I do if I don't understand a word in a text?
• What was the most important thing I just read (summarizing)?
• Does this relate back to my inquiry question?
• What do I want to share about my topic?
• What would be the best way to share what I've learned?
• Who do I want to share my learning with?
• How do I write a paragraph?
• Now that I'm done, what did I like about this project? What would I do differently next time?

Over the past two years, I have discovered some quality online resources for nonfiction texts -- unfortunately not all of them are free...but those that have a cost associated with them at least offer free trials.

Here's a quick rundown of my go-to sites for leveled or Engligh learner-friendly nonfiction texts:

• National Geographic Explorer Magazine - identical content and photos at different reading levels
• Pioneer Edition (2nd-3rd grade reading level) - click on Projectable Edition for the free version of the edition
• Pathfinder Edition (4th-6th grade reading level) - click on Projectable Edition for the free version of the edition
• Readworks.org - a wealth of leveled nonfiction passages, complete with lesson ideas and assessments (all available for free!)
• Education World: News for Kids - a site with several high interest articles for kids (with a 'words to know' section) - complete with teaching resources and ideas for each article (free!)
• Washington Post: KidPost - current events in kid-friendly language
• Reading A-Z - leveled, printable / projectable books on various topics; includes lesson plans, student handouts and comprehension quizzes (free 7-day trial, then requires a subscription)
• Science A-Z - leveled, printable / projectable texts on various science topics; includes lesson plans, student handouts and comprehension quizzes (free 7-day trial, then requires a subscription)
• Tumblebooks - online collection of animated, talking picture books - includes a growing number of nonfiction books on various topics (free 30-day trial, then requires a subscription)

One amazing site that facilitates student interactions with nonfiction text (or any kind of text) is:

image credit: http://www.readwritethink.org/
files/resources/interactives/storymap/

• ReadWriteThink.org - collection of common core literacy lesson plans and online student activities and resources for interacting with text in meaningful ways

  

Those a just a few of the many excellent sites and resources out there for teaching students to love nonfiction reading...  

I'd love to hear about other sites and resources you use for nonfiction text with English learners -- feel free to comment below!

Happy reading!

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go."

— Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"

Elevator Speech: Success in Co-teaching Math

A 3rd grade teacher and I have the opportunity to speak to our staff for the first time tomorrow about the success our students have had in our co-taught math class over the past 3 years....the only catch is we have about 5 minutes on our PD agenda!  So, we developed an 'elevator speech'-style presentation to highlight what's working for us and what we find challenging.

Check it out here and let us know what you think!




Wish us luck!  Hoping co-teaching continues to catch on at our school!

Andrea

Schoology vs. Edmodo?

                              vs.

As an EL teacher at an elementary school, I work with several groups of students in multiple grade levels and in various subject areas......so, as you might expect, the management of student materials, resources and papers can be (in a word) overwhelming.  In an effort to streamline the management of these materials and provide students with an interactive and accessible virtual classroom space, I have been trying out edmodo.com and schoology.com with different groups of students.

Both edmodo.com and schoology.com offer a variety of important features for students and teachers, including:

• a network of educators who use the site (including discussion boards for groups of educators)
• searchable public resources for different subject areas
• safe, invite-only virtual classroom spaces, managed by a teacher
• online student discussion boards, quizzes, and assignments, as posted by the managing teacher
• online progress monitoring, managed by teachers, but accessible by students and authorized parents
• linking to/embedding other sites, such as Google Docs, School Tube, Youtube, etc.
• uploading and storing documents and PDFs (teachers)
• embedded app stores for easy access to featured and other apps for learning
• accessible 24/7 by students and teachers

While all of these features are helpful, I came to realize that I have a few, more specific features that I am looking for in an online platform to really cater to my needs and the needs of my students:

• teacher can include visuals in posts to students
• students can interact via real time discussion boards
• students can create and maintain a blog as a part of the same online platform
• students can immediately view the results of quizzes, and can be given the option to re-take the quiz when they are ready
• teachers can upload existing quiz questions from other mediums (ExamView)
• teachers and students can link their account with their school Google Docs account

Based on my experiences so far with edmodo.com and schoology.com, I have found schoology.com to be a better match for my students and I (schoology.com includes all of the specific features I was looking for...and more!).  With that said, I feel like edmodo.com is, at this point, more established and has more public lesson resources available for teachers.  So, there are certainly pros and cons to both sites. 

Here is an example of a reading comprehension activity I posted on schoology.com for a group of 6th grade English learners:

I got the non-fiction passage and questions from readworks.org, posted the reading to schoology.com for the students, and then inputted the 5 questions and correct answers into a quiz format.  schoology.com grades each student's answers when they are submitted and will transfer them to my gradebook.  Voila!!

Do you use an online platform with your students?  If so, what do you use and why do you like it?

Blogging with English Learners

With the first few days of school behind us, I know many students (and teachers) are ready and anxious to really get started with this year's learning. The milestones that everyone talks about stick out like neon signs to students in the fall...I am so glad I'm finally in 3rd grade so I can learn cursive, multiplication and division! Isn't 6th grade when we get to engineer robots? My brother told me all about the states research project in 4th grade and I want to choose Minnesota.

I love hearing students express their excitement about upcoming topics of study, and am always interested in ways to channel and extend their enthusiasm throughout the year. I also want students to be able to archive their work so that they can share their learning with others and look back in a year or two (or ten) and reflect on the all that they've done.

The 3rd grade teachers in my building began having students blog about their experiences during the school year, sort of like an online journal. The kids loved it because it gave them an authentic purpose for writing (they had an audience who could..and did... comment on their posts!), because they could add their own photos, audio clips and videos to supplement their blog posts, and because they could easily go back and make changes (from school, home, or anywhere) if they discovered mistakes or wanted to revise what they'd written. After hearing about the success of blogging from my colleagues (and their students), I knew I wanted to try it out with my English learners.

I decided to have my 5th grade ELs try out blogging as a part of our fiction and nonfiction literature circles (which we called book club). In class, we chose literature circle roles for the week, and each group decided on the number of pages they wanted to read. Then, usually on Thursdays, we spent our time together blogging about what we read: everyone wrote a summary as a part of their post, and then they recorded their lit circle role for the pages read. On Fridays, we discussed our literature circle role responses together and then had time to read and respond to each others' blog posts. My students really loved reading the responses to their posts and answering their classmates' questions -- both on their blogs and in person.

Blogging was a great motivator, and we eventually discovered that we wanted to delve deeper into many of the topics we were reading about...by the end of the year last year, our literature circles had morphed into very motivated inquiry circles. I can't wait to use blogging again this year with students!

Blogging platform used: kidblog.org

Here are a few snapshots of our blogs:

My initial blog post:

And here are a few examples of student blogs:

Khan Academy

A big part of my job is collaborating and co-teaching with mainstream classroom teachers, so I always try to keep an eye out for technology that could be helpful for English learners (as well as other learners) in content area classes, such as math, science, social studies and language arts.

I happened to turn on the TV for a few minutes this afternoon and I caught a good portion of 60 Minutes, which was featuring Khan Academy - an edtech site that hosts thousands of free educational videos on (what seems like) any subject you may be interested in learning. I have used Khan Academy a several times with elementary and adult ed math classes, and have had positive results.


I see Khan Academy fitting into math and science instruction with English learners for a few main reasons:

1. Students can learn at their own pace - they can stop, rewind, or fast forward to hear and see the information as many times as they need to really understand the concept.
   
2. The videos provide modeling of both the new concept, as well as of the processing language necessary to explain and describe the new concept.
3. Students can practice various concepts with practice problems, and are offered a corresponding video to watch if they get stuck on a problem. A personal tutor...just a click away.
   
4. Teachers can track students' progress on Khan Academy by creating a free account and then creating a class list (students log in using a Google Apps account, and then add the teacher as a Coach). Once a student begins working on a set of practice problems, data about the # of problems right/wrong, as well as a record of the type of problems attempted are all accessible by the teacher/coach. This allows teachers to closely monitor progress and confer with students in a meaningful, specific and individualized way.

This year will be the first year I'll have students add me as a coach so I can track their progress. I'm pretty excited to see how well it works and will definitely report back!

For the record, the categories of topics covered by Khan Academy videos are (as of right now):

• math
• science
• computer science
• finance & econ
• humanities
  
• test prep

Have you used Khan Academy or some other screencasted video lessons? If so, which ones, and would you recommend them to other teachers?

Thanks for reading and happy Labor Day weekend! Hope the start of the school year goes smoothly for everyone!

--Andrea