Connecting Comprehension and Technology PLC
I was introduced to Anne Goudvis several years ago when she did a professional development workshop at High Peaks Elementary. High Peaks was using the Comprehension Toolkit and Anne was there to help us better implement the practices. When I changed jobs last year and began teaching technology at Peak to Peak, I was looking for ways to integrate the technology standards I needed to teach with the grade level content that students were engaging with. I discovered, Connecting Comprehension and Technology. Knowing how much I learned from Anne's workshop, I decided to buy the book and fell in love with the ideas. This year the kindergarten teachers and I have been doing a year long book study. Each month we read and discuss a section of the book and look for ways to implement the practices into our classrooms. During our first month we read about monitoring comprehension and started using the Drawing Pad with students. Some of the early projects included reading books about animals getting ready for winter and drawing about our thinking. Later we read about puffins and used Drawing Pad to show what we learned. Students loved using Drawing Pad to show their thinking.
During the second month we read about connecting and annotating our thinking and began to use Book Creator along with Drawing Pad. Students continued to use Drawing Pad to show their thinking with pictures, learned to save their drawings and then add them to Book Creator in order to add voice to their work. We fell in love with Book Creator and Drawing Pad have used them as comprehension tools in many situations. As we looked at the chapters on Asking Questions, we introduced students to BrainPOP Jr. and PebbleGo as online resources that are safe and easy for kindergarten students to do their research. In small groups, students researched animals of the continents they were learning about in class. Students used Book Creator to show what they learned about their animals. We published their work in an interactive Google Drawing . Students love to read and listen to each other's work. This month we have been talking about visualizing. We began by looking at the book Right Outside My Window by Mary Ann Hoberman and talking about how the author has shown what is outside the window through illustrations. After a few pages, I asked students to become the illustrators and visualize what the author was describing. They did a great job of drawing their visualizations.
"Silver raindrops catch the light, right outside my window."
"A spider weaves her web around, right outside my window."
Next we read the poem Green Giant by Jack Prelutsky. Students really enjoyed visualizing the giant and sharing their visualizations.
Thank you Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, Katie Muhtaris, and Kristin Ziemke for helping us to effectively engage students in the reading process with the technology in our classrooms. I recently read Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K - 6 Classroom. Looking forward to implementing new ideas and practices in our classrooms from this as well.
