The exploration of creativity is something I find students are not given the opportunity to do within the modern age of education, even at the elementary level. The ELA curriculum at the K-2 level heavily emphasizes fluency instruction in repeated natures where students are expected to read grade level texts and respond to writing prompts associated with the texts. After completing my first year of teaching first grade, I have come to recognize that my students were not given many opportunities to work on projects that were innovative and allowed them to create a product from square one. It has come to my attention that my school site believes that students best learn how to read by following Fundations and Wit and Wisdom curriculums to fidelity. However, these curriculums are inadequate at allowing students to explore their creativity and curiosity. This unfortunate reality is motivating me to create an innovative project that embeds technology in a way my students have never experienced before.
The structure of guided reading has not allowed students to have choice on the types of books they are interested in. With the young population I work with, it is especially important to foster curiosity through providing students with opportunities to engage with learning materials that they actually have interest in. After all, when I am teaching very fundamental skills in reading and writing, I have noticed that students would be more passionate about building these skills with materials they have special interest in. When children have opportunities to build upon their natural curiosity, their learning outcomes are much higher. Thus, the aspect of my work environment I want to have a strong impact on changing next year is increasing literacy development by allowing students to collaboratively create their own texts and read each other's work!
Within my beliefs about how youth learn, I find four to be most compelling in relation to this project I am implementing this upcoming school year.
1. Students learn best when they are able to socialize and collaborate with one another.
2. Students are more passionate about learning when they can read and write material that they have a special interest in.
3. Students learn best when they have an opportunity to use their creativity.
4. Students love learning with technology but need explicit instruction to use technology in an academic manner.
It is a reality that students need to learn how to read and write at an early age. In fact, if students are not proficient in reading by third grade, they are four times as likely to drop out of high school than proficient readers. How they learn how to read doesn’t have to be boring and/or predictable! Thus, I am planning to implement a structure in which students can create their own books and have opportunities to collaborate with each other on writing their books and sharing them with their peers.
First, I want to collect data from my students at the beginning of the year on the topics that pique their interest and what they would like to learn more about. Do they want to read about cars? Fashion? Sports? Friend drama? This is important data to collect as a teacher to strategically pair students with those who have like-minded interests. After all, they should be creating a product that they have an actual interest in. Authentic literacy engagement through project-based learning is proven to increase student motivation and engagement, which is super important if I want my students to develop their reading comprehension and writing fluency.
This crucial step is inspired by Rita Pierson’s Ted Talk “Every Kid Needs a Champion” and Mike Wesch’s Ted Talk “Learning from Baby George” as Pierson urges the importance of building relationships with students to make students feel seen and valued and Wesch argues that student natural curiosity is piqued when educators emphasize the importance of learning and developing special interests. By allowing students to create books on topics they care about, I am seeing them in deeper ways than a scripted curriculum would imagine.
After this initial data collection, I will create groups based on similar interests. I will have students create their own book on paper first. Because I am teaching second grade next year, I have an understanding of where my students are coming from in terms of their literacy development. They have mastered sequence of events, and identifying story elements such as character, setting, problem, and resolution. Using these skills, I will have students create a short book allowing them full creative control, as long as the events in the story follow a logical sequence and they clearly identify four major story elements within their work.
Students will brainstorm their ideas and write a draft of their book on paper. Once they are done with this step, I will check their writing, give feedback, and finally they can illustrate.Yay, they made a book! Assignment, done.
Well, that’s what I would have said, last year. Typically, writing assignments follow that structure–give directions on writing prompt, students brainstorm, they write on paper, I give feedback, and lastly they draw. However, after this class, I am recognizing that structure does not allow them to meet their fullest creative potential.
As a first year teacher, I have found myself to be a Techno-Traditionalist according to Scott Noon’s 4-Tier Model of Teacher Training in Technology. I feel as though I have used technology to a moderate extent to complete work-related tasks such as using online spreadsheets to keep track of student data, using ClassDojo to communicate with families on student progress, and accessing curriculum materials and lesson plans through my school network’s Google curriculum hub. However, I am recognizing that I have not given my students the opportunity to transform their learning through technology. Thus, I feel as though this last portion of the project is going to push me into the Techno-constructivist box.
The last part of the project is taking paper copies of their creations and transforming them into online flippable books through the app Book Creator. Students are able to make their own books using collaborative software where they can type their text, search for images within the app, draw using a pen tool, and even take pictures and record audio! Its simple-to-use nature according to educator Rachel Walker has so many different classroom applications. This truly is a gamechanger especially for my students who are still building those foundational skills, allowing them to record their voice and using that as the text will allow them to move away from traditional writing exercises to a multimodal literacy experience.
It cannot be unstated that students need explicit instruction with basic technology skills in order to complete this assignment. While this generation of students could be classified as digital natives according to Marc Prensky’s definition of digital natives, as they are fully immersed and grow up around technology, Jennifer Spiegel argues that teachers cannot assume that students understand professional uses of technology because they know how to use it personally. I plan on instructing my students how to type, how to upload images, and how to press the buttons to add more pages to their story. This technology is intuitive for myself, but not necessarily to a seven year old that has never used the application.
After completing the online version of their books, these can be exported to PDF files, and I plan on allowing students to do a show and tell with the class where they can read their books to the class. This completely shifts their learning experience as they are moving away from being consumers of expected texts to producers of innovative stories. We can celebrate each other for creating books from scratch. If students want to take these books home, I can print their online copies and send them home with them to use for their daily reading log.
Using Book Creator is a completely new concept that I would have never imagined before taking this course. I did not recognize this as an option because there was an enormous emphasis by administration on developing writing skills on paper in first grade. I think allowing a technological media to write and read stories will allow students to increase their literacy skills and make them more invested in becoming excellent readers and writers. This nontraditional approach to learning excites me and I feel as though students will be excited with this opportunity as well.
By choosing Book Creator as the digital product to improve literacy development, I am allowing students to use their creativity to engage in a collaborative platform to create their own books. This transcends their previous engagement with writing and reading because they are moving away from the expectation of completing repeated writing prompt worksheets into a meaningful purpose of creating their own digital book. The collaborative nature of this application allows students to experience learning this new app together, brainstorm ideas, and give each other feedback, which connects to my belief that students can better develop literacy through social interaction rather than in isolation. By allowing students to share their digital stories with each other, they are expanding their literacy development by becoming more confident in their storytelling abilities so they can empower themselves as authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment