Literacy Now

January is a time rife with resolutions—to be more organized, to work more efficiently, to spend more time researching new teaching ideas. When I am asked about apps for the classroom, my brain immediately begins cataloging the variety of programs that have been designed for students. But what about the teachers? We have so many needs—record keeping, parent communication, and lesson planning are just the beginning of a seemingly never-ending list. When apps for education are discussed, students get the bulk of the focus, and rightly so. But a great variety of apps also exist specifically for teachers, and we should be sharing these finds just as enthusiastically. So...just what is out there, exactly? What apps can help you achieve your goals for the New Year?

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In light of the tight budgets and lacking resources that many districts are facing, do-it-yourself professional development is a significant need for educators. And of course, there are apps for that!

TeacherCast Pro is an app that simplifies online learning for teachers. It puts app reviews, instructional videos, podcasts, blogs, chat rooms, and other professional content all in one place, making access quick and easy. The resources offered within the app address many education topics and are especially valuable for anyone who finds it overwhelming to sort through the clutter of internet searches—or for anyone who just doesn't have the time to do so. This app allows teachers to save time and effort while enhancing their own teaching abilities.

appoLearning is an app with a similar concept—it brings a collection of varied resources to one place, giving teachers an organized and easy to navigate final product. The difference is that appoLearning is focused specifically on apps for the classroom. It offers articles and expert insight on selecting apps, as well as suggestions broken down by grade level and content area. In addition, users can submit app suggestion lists based on specific topics. This is an excellent resource for language arts teachers using mobile technology in the classroom, whether they are looking for something specific or just browsing to get ideas.

Another area of great need for teachers is classroom organization and management. One of the many benefits of technology in the classroom is the array of available tools to simplify these tasks.

Status of the Class is an app that allows teachers to make lists and groupings in a digital form, replacing all the paper lists and notes that have an alarming tendency to go missing at critical moments. More than just a list-maker, notes can be added with student names, giving teachers flexibility in how they utilize this app. From creating guided reading groups to keeping track of permission slips to creating homework logs, Status of the Class is simple and easy-to-use, making it a brilliant classroom companion.

Another incredible selection, iDoceo, just might be a dream come true. This app allows teachers to track attendance, make seating charts, plan lessons, record grades, and store student contact information—for multiple classes! Data can easily be imported or exported, and sensitive information can be password protected. This app may take a little effort to learn, but it streamlines the process of organizing student information. Finally, all the necessary tools to accomplish the many daily tasks of teachers can be found in one neat little package.

Classroom management has another time-consuming component: data tracking. Whether you are working with IEP goals or RTI data, teachers know that organization is essential to keeping up with how students are progressing. Super Duper Data Tracker is an app designed to track student academic goals. Simply set up a profile for each student, enter goals, and can then record the time spent on each goal and the progress towards mastery. Data can be graphed as well as shared electronically, and students can be added to multiple groups. This app makes data collection a breeze!

What are you hoping to achieve this year? These selections are only a small sampling of the apps available for teachers, with more being added all the time. If one doesn't quite meet your needs, another offering may suit you perfectly. Whatever your resolutions for the New Year may be, chances are good that an app exists to help you achieve your goals.

Lindsey Fuller

In today’s world, the topic of using technology in the classroom can be intimidating. In this monthly column, join one teacher on a quest to discover the best way to meet the needs of her digital-age learners…moving beyond the technology tools to focusing on supporting each student’s learning.

In October’s column, “How Do We Know What They Know?,” I shared some ways that we can assess our students to determine exactly what they know and design our instruction to meet those needs. But, now that we have that data, where do we go next?

Often, when you are looking at a class of twenty five students that means you have twenty five different areas of need. If you are teaching an English Language Arts class, that is often compounded by the fact that each student has a different level of mastery in the standards of grammar and mechanics, reading, and writing. If you broke those broad areas down even further, the sheer volume of data that we would have for one class becomes mind-boggling. Does contemplating this cause anyone else to become overcome with overwhelm?

Getting Directions

The world of a teacher involves so much more than just the face-to-face time we have with our learners. Our attention and energy are pulled in so many directions, threatening to cause us to derail in our true mission: meeting the needs of each and every learner, each and every day. At times, it’s tempting to return to whole-group instruction simply because it is easier to manage the time. No matter how well we plan and schedule, the reality is that we live in a world with students, students who are always changing. How do we balance time and provide students with meaningful, personalized feedback to direct their growth?

The great advantage of living in the digital age is that there are tools that can help us meet our needs. The real trick is finding the ones that can easily be embedded to support not only our teaching practice, but also the individualized instruction our learners need to continue down the path of their learning journey.

One fabulous feedback option is through their individual blogs. Those of you who are familiar with my classroom know that blogging is an integral part of the learning process for my students. They use their blogs to reflect on their learning, connect with their global peers, publish their writing, set personal goals, and share their voices with the world. My learners are voracious writers because their writing is meaningful and purposeful. They have an authentic audience who will respond and push them to think deeper. And as amazing as all of this student-directed learning is, on KidBlog, the home of all of this fabulous-ness, my favorite feature is the private commenting.

With KidBlog, you can set the safety standards of who can view blogs or make comments and when they live online. For my students, I have the setting where every post and comment must be read and approved by me. With it set in this way. I read everything that my students are writing. Once a post is approved, the blog administrator (classroom teacher) has the ability to submit comments to students that can only be viewed by the blog’s author.

Private comments are the perfect opportunity to ask probing questions, redirect a line of thinking, conduct some reteaching, or provide a new link for further study. Many times, my comments request that the students make changes in a comment on their original post. Because blog posts and comments are published chronologically, it shows a student’s growth while also documenting the feedback and dialogue. Often my students will look back on a previous line of learning on one of their different blog posts as a reminder of their growth and how to push themselves further down the learning path.

A Different Route

While providing feedback on blog posts is a fantastic way to personalize instruction, most times those conversations are asynchronous. The dialogue may take place throughout the course of several days. However, there are times when synchronous conversation is needed. My students are involved in much collaborative writing. In those cases, since more than one student is working on a piece of writing, timely, synchronous feedback becomes more crucial to keep each individual headed in the right direction.

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Enter Google Drive. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the benefits of Drive and probably use it yourself. However, the ability to have multiple students working on one document or presentation from different devices or locations takes collaboration to a whole different level. I can have one student curled up on the floor with pillows and his iPad while another one is sitting at a classroom desktop computer and another student is sitting at their desk using their smartphone all working on the same document at the same time.

I teach in a district where every student (and teacher) already has an assigned Google account. However, there are several tutorials online about how to assign students accounts using only one teacher Gmail account. All notifications will be sent to the teacher’s account, not the students’.

Once the students are logged on, one student from the group will need to invite the other students and the teacher to share and edit that document. Then students can begin working on their part of the document. What is fantastic about this option is that anyone invited can also make comments, which appear on the side of the document or presentation. That means that as the teacher, you can confer with many different students while they are writing from your computer (I usually have multiple tabs open and work on several pieces at the same time). Each collaborator is assigned a different color so that you can see the changes being made while they are making them.

You can reteach, redirect, and cause them to probe deeper. Your learners can respond to your comments; now you are having a synchronous conversation about their writing as they are writing. They can ask one another (or you) questions about the choices that are being made before they get to the end of writing their first draft. Once they have worked with the ideas from one comment, a student can mark it resolved.

The first time my students experience the synchronous conversation while they are writing, they are ecstatic. One student told me that this was the coolest thing she had ever done in school. I asked her to explain and she replied, “Well, with Drive, I’m able to see my writing from different people’s perspective. The comments make me think harder while I’m writing so I get a better piece when I’m done. I like that.”

Today’s digital age students live in a world of “right now.” They crave that instant feedback. Through Drive, I am able to give them guidance while not hovering over their shoulder. The feedback is timely and relevant for each student. Furthermore, the dialogue and learning are documented throughout each writing project providing a clear view of a student’s growth.

Full Speed Ahead

I realize that the options for providing student feedback are numerous. My intent was to provide you a map demonstrating how digital tools can support your drive to providing your learners meaningful, individualized, and timely feedback.

I am always on a hunt for new ideas. If you have a tool that you love using to provide feedback for your learners, please share it with all of us in a comment. With all of these ideas, before we know it, we’ll all be on the road headed to timely, personalized feedback for our students.

Julie D. Ramsay is a Nationally Board Certified educator and the author of “CAN WE SKIP LUNCH AND KEEP WRITING?”: COLLABORATING IN CLASS & ONLINE, GRADES 3-8 (Stenhouse, 2011). She teaches ELA to sixth graders at Rock Quarry Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She also travels the country to speak, present, and facilitate workshops in applying technology to support authentic learning. Read her blog at juliedramsay.blogspot.com. 

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A year and a half ago, I sat in my classroom on a late summer day and stared with trepidation at the giant vault-like cart that held the 24 iPads I would soon be integrating into my classroom. I was ecstatic to have the opportunity to enhance student learning through new technology, but it was already an overwhelming task. Here I was, with a new set of standards to teach, no curriculum to guide me in doing so, and a whole lot of devices which required me to change just about every aspect of how I taught. These concerns were only heightened as I came to realize that integrating technology into an upper elementary classroom largely focused on language arts instruction created challenges I had not anticipated.

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Ways to accomplish tasks digitally are pretty easy to dream up when it comes to math and science. But it is a little trickier with language arts. Sure, reading eBooks, doing research and typing instead of hand writing essays were no-brainers. But language arts instruction encompasses so much more, and truly incorporating mobile devices in such a way that made them vital to the learning process was a bit daunting. Especially once I came to realize that there was an obvious lack of language arts apps for older students. I needed graphic organizers, writing reference tools, games that reinforced language arts concepts. But few existed.

Fortunately, the incredible minds at ReadWriteThink.org have finally come to my rescue—and yours, too! If you are unfamiliar with ReadWriteThink.org, it is an amazing website bursting with free lesson plans and aids for teaching language arts. They also have wonderful online tools to help students practice language arts concepts. These have begun to be transformed into wonderful apps that are a huge relief to those of us who are working so hard to mesh technology with reading and writing instruction. My students and I have been using the apps in our classroom, and here are our thoughts:

Trading Cards is by far our favorite app of the bunch. Students enter the name of a topic, person, character, place, etc. The app then generates a trading card, and the student is prompted to answer some questions about their topic. The questions are excellent, and ensure that the student has a real understanding of the subject. The answers are then inserted into the card, and a picture is added to complete the project. My students first used this app while working on a social studies assignment that involved researching a famous event in history, and I asked them to do a trading card once they felt their knowledge was enough to teach the class. Many soon learned that they weren't quite ready to create a presentation and that more research and discussion was in order—the questions helped them to realize that they did not know their topic as well as they should.

Trading Cards is an excellent classroom tool that can be applied in so many creative ways. Saving, sharing, and printing the cards is very simple, and the app is even designed to allow for multiple users on the same device.

Venn Diagram is another ReadWriteThink.org app, and it is so simple, yet so necessary! It is really difficult to create a usable and readable Venn diagram on a tablet without using an app. This one fills the need perfectly. The default setting is for two rings, but a third ring can be added as necessary, and different colors can be utilized. Students create labels that contain the information to be sorted, and these can range in size depending on the needs of the user. It is very easy to use, and all of the ReadWriteThink.org apps provide easy sharing and storage options for finished products.

The RWT Timeline app is exactly what it sounds like, and it was the one I was most excited to see in the App Store. I use timelines often with my students, and I had tried several different methods for creating them digitally—with lackluster results, at best. Timeline allows students to create simple timelines with dates, details, and even pictures. It is very user-friendly, and my students were even able to edit their work without any difficulty. I was thrilled with how easy it was to create and share the timelines that so often accompany our research projects and book reports.

As if the apps already covered here weren't enough, ReadWriteThink.org also has three poetry apps on offer: Acrostic Poem, Diamante Poem, and Theme Poem. Each allows students to create original poetry in a different form, and they are versatile enough to use with younger students as well as older ones. The apps walk users through how to create the unique type of poem, making it fun for students and effortless for teachers. My students especially enjoyed the Theme Poem app, which offers a collection of shapes and figures to use as backgrounds in the finished products.

Alphabet Organizer is an app that is aimed at younger readers, and therefore my students did not spend any time with it. It is designed to allow students to enter words and pictures that are associated with each letter of the alphabet. The app is outside my range of expertise, but I am sure it has been designed with just as much thought and care as all the rest of the apps from ReadWriteThink.org  and would be worth downloading.

All of these apps are incredible resources for teachers who want to incorporate technology into their language arts instruction—students are practicing the application of new concepts and creating products to show their learning, using both technology and higher order thinking skills. In fact, these apps are so well-designed that students can use them independently—students are not only provided with necessary tools, but with instructional content that guides them through the process of applying skills and concepts.

With this collection, language arts concepts for older students are finally getting the attention they need in the world of mobile devices. We have enjoyed using them in our classroom immensely, and hope you will find them just as useful as we have!

The International Reading Association partners with the National Council of Teachers of English and Verizon Thinkfinity to produce ReadWriteThink.org, a website devoted to providing literacy instruction and interactive resources for grades K–12.

New to me in the past year is the opportunity to participate in a Twitter book club. If you have not had the opportunity, why not try this for yourself? On the last Sunday of each month, teachers, librarians, and book lovers gather for #titletalk. The time is 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, and the November event is scheduled for this Sunday, November 24. At the time and date go to Twitter and search for #titletalk. A topic announced at the beginning of the hour guides all participating. For example, one session I participated in was on historical fiction.

The tweets start flying fast and furiously. You can find new titles in each session that you can bring to your classroom or library. The fun part, though, is developing a virtual friendship with folks all over the globe. You really gain camaraderie with librarians, classroom teachers, and college professors. The next time you attend a conference (like IRA 2014 in New Orleans) you can seek out your virtual friends and you have an instant connection!

#Titletalk was founded by Colby Sharp (@colbysharp on Twitter) and Donalyn Miller (@donalynbooks on Twitter). The chats are archived, so if you miss the time and date you can still catch up at http://titletalk.wikispaces.com.  There are two videos to help beginners join in, and on the right hand column is a list of the past chats. Scroll through until you find the date of the conversation you want. Because the tweets are so fast, this is a great way to go back and review book titles that have been discussed. 

More great chats include:

• The Sharp-Schu book club (#sharpshu on Twitter) was founded by Colby Sharp and John Schumacher (@MrSchuReads on Twitter).
• #Txlchat focuses on library issues in Texas. It is held the 2nd & 4th Tuesday from 8:00-9:00 Central Standard Time. Visit the archives and read more information at http://txlchat.wikispaces.com/TXLchat+Archives.
• IRA hosts bimonthly Twitter chats using the #IRAchat hashtag.  Past chats have included digital writing in the classroom with Julie D. Ramsay (Thursday, July 18 at 8:00 p.m. EST), International Literacy Day and “inventing your future” with Bill Hader and America’s Promise (Monday, September 9 at 8:00 p.m. EST), and informational reading and writing with Seymour Simon and Jennifer Altieri (Thursday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m. EST). Read the archives at https://storify.com/iratoday, and follow #IRAchat on Twitter to see when the next chat will be.

So why not try it? Whatever the topic winds up being, you know it’s gonna be a good conversation!

Marjie Podzielinski is a librarian at Coulson Tough School in The Woodlands, Texas, marjiepodge@yahoo.com.

Teaching in ACTion is a series from the Advisory Committee of Teachers (ACT), an International Reading Association committee comprised of exemplary reading and literacy teachers from around the world. Educators who best exemplify the mission of IRA are chosen from a pool of applicants to serve a three-year term. Among other responsibilities, the main charge of ACT is to be the conduit between IRA’s members and the board of directors.

ACT invites member to engage in the conversation by sending responses to us. ACT’s goal is to get a feel for how members feel about current hot topics, so that we may better serve members by sharing their concerns with the board of directors.

Do your students struggle with grammar? Mine often do. This admission sometimes feels like a dirty secret to be hidden away. Yet, the way the human brain processes language is fascinating—and incredibly intricate. In the push to meet goals and achieve grade level targets, perhaps we sometimes forget what a difficult task we are actually putting before our students. Considering the complexity of the English language, is it any wonder that it takes students a long time to master grammar skills?

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Practice is imperative to helping students improve their language abilities. Ideally, most of this practice will come as an integrated portion of reading and writing instruction. Using language skills in context, through real-life tasks, is always going to be the best way for students to gain deep understanding. That being said, teachers know that practice in any form can be helpful for students who are struggling.

Technology provides teachers and students with such varied opportunities to approach learning in different ways. With all the buzz around project-based learning and higher-order thinking, we may sometimes dismiss too quickly the ways in which simple practice can be utilized in the classroom, especially with struggling students. Even these basic activities can be applied in positive ways, and with a little creativity, extended to further enhance learning.
I recently had the opportunity to use the Grammar Pop app with my students. The app was designed by Mignon Fogarty, aka “Grammar Girl.” Many readers may be familiar with the Grammar Girl’s blog, Quick and Dirty Tips, which offers all kinds of useful grammar tidbits for adults and students. The app is game-based, requiring players to race against a clock to identify the parts of speech in increasingly complex sentences. As the game progresses, the player is able to earn rewards and unlock more difficult levels.

As far as educational game apps go, Grammar Pop is pretty typical. However, it addresses an area that many students struggle with, and grammar practice apps aren’t particularly plentiful. Grammar Pop fills a specific need, and will appeal to students who are more easily engaged through game-based learning, or who learn best through repetition. 

Apps such as Grammar Pop are excellent resources to provide for students when they have down time or as options for rewards and recess on rainy days. Every teacher understands that each minute in the classroom is valuable, and needs to be put to productive use. Keeping fun and engaging educational apps such as this one in supply can help fill in some of these small bits of time with opportunities to learn.

Not only can a practice app be used to keep students engaged in educational content, but they can also be used to spark an interest in students that leads to more in-depth inquiry. For instance, a student trying to achieve the next level on Grammar Pop, who doesn’t know how to identify a particular part of speech, could be encouraged to do some independent research in order to meet their goal. This app contains highly complex sentences in the higher levels, which may lead students to investigate beyond what they would normally study as part of their grade-level curriculum.

It can be tempting to dismiss out of hand any technology tools that don’t immediately appear to require those coveted higher-order thinking skills. But it is always important to realize that using technology effectively often isn’t about the technology at all—it is about how the technology is utilized. Viewing every available tool as an opening to create significant learning experiences ensures that students are not deprived of any opportunity to practice the skills they are working so hard to master, in any way that appeals to their specific learning needs.    

Lindsey Fuller is a sixth grade teacher in Decatur, Illinois. Her interests are classroom technology integration, literacy instruction, and Common Core curriculum development and implementation. You can read more from Lindsey on these topics at her blog, Tales of a 6th Grade Classroom.