Digital Tools for Reading and Writing

According to Frey, Fisher, and Gonzalez (2010), “In literacy 2.0, we need to equip students with the cognitive tools that allow them to produce and share knowledge - using sounds, images, and texts - and the technological tools that provide them the means to do so” (p. 72). There are so many of these technological tools available that it can be overwhelming at times to figure out what is the best tool to use with our students. There are two tools that I would like to review and discuss how I would use them into my reading and writing curriculum in third grade.

The first tool I would like to discuss is ReadWorks. I have not used ReadWorks in my classroom, but there are a couple of other teachers in my building that have used it with their students. After exploring ReadWorks a bit more, there are many things I discovered I like about it. My first idea of how to use this resource is as a station during our literacy block. With my third graders, I have found that choice stations are the best way to go to get them exposed to different types of literacy activities and allow me to work with small groups while others are working with a group or independently. I love the Article-A-Day feature of ReadWorks and how it exposes students to a different reading assignment each day, and also includes response questions. The ability to choose a passage by grade level or Lexile level and assign it to different students is also beneficial, as is the audio feature available on many of the passages. These features would allow me to differentiate my instruction to the variety of leveled learners in my classroom. I also like that there are many different genres represented and ReadWorks would expose my students to many different types of reading and meet many of our reading standards when they not only read the passages but answer the corresponding questions.  

The second tool that I looked over was Epic! Books for Kids. After doing a little research over the weekend, I introduced Epic to my students this week. They absolutely love it and are begging for more time on Epic! I use this during station time or as an early finisher activity, and I love that it has built-in comprehension quizzes. Not only can I set the student’s reading levels individually, but I can also track their progress. It shows me how long they spent on each book, and how many pages they’ve flipped (so I can see if they spent 15 minutes flipping pages back and forth 1,000 times or if they just read the 10 pages of the book in 15 minutes). Epic also has a built-in incentive program - moving the students up “levels” and unlocking special features on each level. The only thing I do not like about Epic is that there are “educational videos”, which can be disabled, but somehow my students have found a glitch and can watch them even when I have them disabled. Although many of the videos are great and would be a great addition to a science or social studies unit, I have a few students (boys) who like to just watch the Lego or Minecraft videos, which apparently are educational in some way. Other than that, I’m loving using Epic in my classroom to increase my student’s exposure to books of all types (and audiobooks too)!

Frey, N., Fisher, D., & Gonzalez, A. (2010). Literacy 2.0: Reading and writing in 21st century classrooms. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.