Non-Fiction Text Features: Incorporating the Digital

There is so much to be gained from walking through the corridors of your school and popping in to see what classes are doing. This morning, I happened to pop into Kim Duffy’s Grade 3 class and discovered a really neat learning experience the class was exploring on Non-Fiction Text Features in digital books. Kim…

Podcasting our Book Club Conversations

Book Club conversations are an important part of a UWCSEA literacy education. Thinking deeply about a shared text, sharing understandings and connections, and – crucially – listening to the perspectives of others, all contributes to our reading experiences. As teachers, we know these conversations are valuable, but we can only be in one place at…

Digital Bytes 9th January 2017

Garageband in the Reading Classroom Garageband is on our computers and iPads and this article shares a number of ways that you can use it in your reading classroom. Whether is it capturing book talks, creating a musical accompaniment, capturing the voice of a book character in an interview or exploring the different instruments from…

Digital Bytes – April 25, 2016

Hot on the heels of a great ReThinking Literacy conference, we have a number of great ideas and resources to share. This week the focus is on Visual Literacy – one of the themes that was highlighted throughout the conference. What’s Going on in this Picture? The New York Times has a great segment in…

Digital Bytes – September 21, 2015

This week’s digital bytes includes articles about a free ebook on capturing digital stories, 11 quotes by famous writers and accompanying writing lessons, and using technology to help students read faster and with better comprehension.

Digital Bytes Sept. 14, 2015

We have a fantastic set of articles in this week’s digital bytes.  The first short yet extremely useful article is about using art to start student’s reading. The second article is about new features in Google Drive and the third is about what digital storytelling is and isn’t.

Digital Bytes June 8th, 2015

This week’s Digital Bytes has a number of great articles. There are a set of great templates for Google Slides presentations that include icons that can be manipulated in terms of size and colour.  Kick off your summer reading with 13 great Minecraft books for yourself and your students.  Finally, there is a fantastic article…

Digital Bytes February 23, 2015

This week’s focus is on reading and writing, including articles about enriching students’ creative writing skills with photography and using games like Mincraft to help your child with their reading. There is also a quick tutorial to help you learn how to delete those pesky untitled posts in your Google Site.

Capturing sound in student thinking and learning

One of the aspects of student learning and thinking that we are trying to capture at United World College is students’ thoughts during their partner conversations. We know that a way that students learn best is by talking about their thinking with a partner or group. As digital literacy coaches, we have been trying to…

Readers Adapt Their Strategies for Reading Online

At UWCSEA East, we have been implementing Reading Workshop (also known as Reader’s Workshop) to help our students develop into fluent, capable and effective readers. Our Literacy Coach Michelle Goodison has been supporting teachers in this framework, and a lot of professional development has occurred to help teachers introduce the strategies that help students best…