literacy in a digital age
Presented by Lisa Kerscher, Education Media Specialist (WW IDEA), and Alanna Vaneps, formerly Primary Educator, Russell Elementary (now Curriculum Director for Missoula County Public Schools). Reading remains a fundamental skill in our digital world, but how do educators use technology to make reading itself more engaging or provide incentives to read more? Discover a variety of angles, including a local classroom-to-classroom collaboration, an online reading-incentive activity called Read-A-Route, and some free, interactive Web-based resources.
Collaborative Book Reading/Communications Project
Media Communications Outline/Information (PDF)
Reading Incentive Activities
Read A Route - Ice Age Floods Trail
Reading Resources
Starfall — A free public service to teach children to read with phonics. Their systematic phonics approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL).
Storyline Online — An excellent online streaming video program featuring famous actors reading chlidren's books aloud. Includes Closed Captioning.
Into the Book — A highly interactive reading comprehension resource for Grades K-4 that focuses on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing.
Elements of a Story — An interactive resource for Grades 2-5 that explains the basic parts of a story.
My StoryMaker — An interactive storymaking site with choice of characters, settings, props, actions, interactions, and feelings. You can even print when you're done!
Read-Write-Think: Student Materials — Lots of lessons as well as printables and interactives for students, including Literary Elements Map, Story Map, Comparison and Contrast Guide and more.
Doing What Works: Teach Reading Comprehension Strategies
Stairway to Reading — Guidance for teachers and ready-to-use reading lessons and assessments.
Copyright/Fair Use Resources
Center for Social Media: Best Practices in Fair Use — great resources for teachers to better understand fair use; resources may also be selected to share with students
Cyberbee - Copyright — good for early elementary; Flash Player required
Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright — good for older elementary, middle school
Copyright Website — good for middle school and high school
Copyright Kids — includes sample Permission Letters for requesting formal permission for use