Fostering reading cultures in school with ICT

Fostering Reading Cultures in School with Information; Communication and Technology;

As a preamble to fostering reading cultures in school with ICT  I believe its important to give children the best environment to learn how to read;(emergent readers) fostering their love for reading for life then giving them confidence to expand further in expressing themselves through their creative use of digital apps to show their unique reading and writing expression and learning of  literacy skills.

From my experience and pedagogy in a Casa Montessori class with ages 3 to 6 I have witnessed the development of reading phonetic words by 4 year olds  and  then phonograms, diphthongs etc by the older students and reading leveled  little books- BOB BOOKS ; which is very exciting for them to say they read a book! The first set is the number one best seller for Amazon their site claims; for more details check out Bob Books for emerging readers and App   Bob Books now has 4 levels of  phonic based books on an app for ipads and android .
The children then progress to Usbourne series and choosing books from the library; etc .  Children are naturally motivated by the mixed age groups in which they are observing different levels of reading happening around them.Children at 3 are at neurologically at their prime- sensitive period to receive phonetic sounds and are interested in attending to them; Maria Montessori called this the Absorbent Mind; so we introduce the sandpaper cursive letters which we model tracing and saying the sound. After they know about 10 sounds they form phonetic words with the movable alphabet and bring letters to a mat on the floor that has the matching objects and cards to check their work after. Reading progresses to harder phonetic words like piglet etc and common groupings of words (oo; oa; ch sh etc) while reading leveled books so its scaffolded and practicing cursive so they can start to write their own stories they form with the movable alphabet and sharing them.To learn more; read one book written by Maria Montessori;The Secret of Childhood

Example of emergent readers use of Montessori Materials. This is a  google slide from my previous Library Assistant course.

Phonetic words using movable alphabet

forming OO words; 5 year old

sand paper letters

 I  believe  and have  seen that children under the age of 6 learn best sensorially and with movement; for example they touch the sandpaper letters ; see the shape hear and say the sound to bring the abstract out of their concrete manipulation; so I feel the use of technology should be limited for children under 6 for their brain development ;though I see that it can be used in specific purposes younger such as ESL language learning for a young child through a Buncee slides with the use of video recording to show pronunciation and use of assistive technology for special needs as well.

I'm not in the loop to be aware of reading technology other then scholastic online talking books which the elementary students use so I went to investigate online; twitter and my e newsletters from Ed tech and edtuopia for insight to how  digital apps were being used now to support/foster reading literacy.
A useful list of  assisitive technology resources came from Reading Rockets Assistive Technology for children with Learnnig disabilities and from teachthought.technology15 assistive technology tools- such as the apps Ginger; Ghotitt for dyslexia; kurzwell300 for many disabilities; Intel reader which is a hand held device that reads text aloud.

Teaching Literacy in the Digital Age- Inspiration for all levels and literacies; from this e book I found the example of a Book Talker and use of Animoto; like a short trailer video for books.  As well as making digital movie stories that work on storyboarding and scriptwrting.This e book or hard copy resource is helpful because it connected the lessons with AASL and ISTE standards. I agree with the author; Mike Gura on the rationale for use of technology not being the prime focus but;" Rather, the technology and its application to a teaching and learning need represent a significant advantage or improvement to established traditional instructional approaches." This short book trailer is an example of using Animoto; click on link below:
Example of a Book Talker using Animoto; these short video clips highlighting the characters and plot in the books can be created by librarains as well as students encouraging  their classmates to read their choice and learning new skills in explaining it to others like the plot; main events; theme;seting etcmotivating and can create exitement/ connection for reluctant readers to read!

One resource I was encouraged to found on my twitter feed was the
Book Creator App ;         ; it has lots of creative options for students such as adding pictures and using a digital pen; adding audio and video to their book. This app can be used across curriculum and with projects with students around the world-collaboration. The first 40 books are free then there is 2 options per year ; check out bookcreator App. for more details and examples of books created by students and teachers.

Book Creator App

Inspiring Readers and Writers with Virtual Reality: Point of View Activities; I found this embedded in a twitter feed and by giving students  an understanding into a characters viewpoint or writers point of view with virtual reality is an inspiring hook for a novel read/ history lesson etc. Nearpod provides many VR lessons ;7 Favorite Nearpod Virtual Reality Lessons ; some examples are ,The Boston Tea Party and The Maya . Students use a mobile device in a  Google cardboard(under 10$) and lessons are 2.99$. Nearpod provides many lessons filtered  under subject and grade and their price varies from free to 14.00$ to purchase. These are examples of their ELA lessons; Nearpod ELA lessons; for example a free lesson was on Revising and Editing with short quizzes throughout for assessment. I also checked out the Nearpod's Big word Club 5 series of singing story books and listened to one; it was very catchy and Young children would love it; to learn vocabulary and concepts. I like that it gave students a choice to freely respond before and after with a blank digital page with text or drawing tools.  At the end they sing it together and there is a short assessment. This is a good starting point if students then wanted to write a story about a rainforest or use the Book creator app  ; this is an example to listen to Nearpod; Big Word Club.

As mentioned in my previous blog Skype in the classroom is also useful in creating excitement for reluctant especially students through live author talks  some are through Penguin Young readers group and Candlewick which is live connections with illustrators and authors. Skype in the classroom also offers  a collaboration hook that can get students excited to read and write for a specific audience or a common problem with the; Share their Work with the World tool.students are linked to another class anywhere in the world. This is a real life application of reading others work and writing back which is very motivating and connected to real life For more information click on;.Skype Collaborations; Share my work with the world .
Goodreads.com is a recommended list of books when students have a difficult time getting into choosing what to read.

This was a learning curve for me and this blog topic allowed me to expand my knowledge and understanding of the varied options available including reading events like Drop everything and read and Reading riot as well as digital tools to excite students to read and see it as relevant!

Bibliograghy;

 Childhood and Montessori, M. (2017). The Secret of Childhood. [online] Goodreads.com. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/920412.The_Secret_of_Childhood [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

Reading Rockets. (2017). Assistive Technology for Kids with Learning Disabilities: An Overview. [online] Available at: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/assistive-technology-kids-learning-disabilities-overview [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Literacy-Digital-Age-Inspiration/dp/1564843394; edited by Mike Gura

Bobbooks.com. (2017). apps. [online] Available at: https://www.bobbooks.com/apps/ [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

http://classtechtips.com/2017/10/01/virtual-reality-point-view-activity/

Nearpod.com. (2017). Nearpod. [online] Available at: https://nearpod.com/s/top-ela-lessons-F798 [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].
 Education.microsoft.com. (2017). Share work with the World - Microsoft in Education. [online] Available at: https://education.microsoft.com/Story/SkypeCollaboration?