Search Results for: "book wink"

Book Wink

Kelly Tenkely7 Comments on Book Wink2974 views

What it is: Book Wink is an absolutely incredible site to motivate students in 3rd through 8th grade to read.  Through podcasts and web video Book Wink introduces students to books that will help get students excited about reading.  Video book talks are about 3 minutes in length and introduce students to a topic, and the additional read-alikes that can be found on the Book Wink website.  Books can be searched by grade, subject, author, or title.  Subscribe to the video podcats to automatically receive the newest book talks.  This months book talk introduces students to the heist.  Check it out, it is fantastic!

How to integrate Book Wink into the classroom:   Book Wink is an outstanding way to excite and motivate students to read.   Use Book Wink with a projector and introduce your whole class to a book talk.  The book talks are engaging and will have your students wanting to check out books on the subject for silent reading time.  Each book talk gives a related list of books along with their age appropriateness.  This makes it simple for your students to find a book that will capture their attention and help them gain a love of reading. Check out the Book Wink archives to find a genre or topic that fits with your current curriculum.  Topics include: heists, World War II, Sharks, 19th Centrury, Love, Mythology, Volcanos, Mermaids, Museum Mysteries, Sea Adventures, Parallel Universes, Popularity, South America, and Endangered Animals.  A new book talk is added each month, this should have your students excited about reading year round!  Book Wink would be a great site to have bookmarked or set as a homepage in the school  library.  After your students have become familiar with the book talk format on Book Wink, encourage them to host and record their own book talks.

 

Tips:  Book Wink is free to use.  You can support Book Wink through purchases from their online store or through a donation.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Book Wink in your classroom.

Extreme Speed Booking:Using Technology to help kids love reading

Kelly Tenkely10 Comments on Extreme Speed Booking:Using Technology to help kids love reading5391 views
What it is:  What makes technology SO great is the way that it can make life (and teaching) more productive and fun.  Over the years, I have found so many ways that technology can make reading more rewarding for both kids who love to read, and kids who dread reading.  Today, I created an “Extreme Speed Booking” website for @michellek107′s class at Anastasis.  I created the site quickly using Weebly, an awesome WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website editor.  Drag and drop website building is where it is at!  The idea behind the site is to introduce students to a variety of books and form classroom book groups.  How does Extreme Speed Booking work?  A whole lot like speed dating.  🙂   Students spend a little time with each book and then rate them accordingly with “I want to read more”,  “Interesting”, “Not for me”, or “I’ve already read”.  Students can also make a note of how interested they are in reading the book (maybe a 1-10 scale)?  This process introduces students to a variety of books, genres and authors.  Students may come across titles and authors they wouldn’t otherwise find.  It also helps teachers form classroom book groups that are of high-interest and investment to students because they had input.
How to integrate Extreme Speed Booking into the classroom: Extreme Speed Booking is a fun way to build book groups/literature circles.  I love this method of exposure to a variety of books, authors, and genres.
For our purposes at Anastasis, I created the Weebly website with a link to the “look inside” on Amazon.  Because all of our students have an iPad, this was the simplest way to get the book preview into the hands of the students.  Don’t have technology?  No problem!  Just make sure that you have enough copies of books so that each student can sit with the physical book during the Extreme Speed Booking sessions.  If you have classroom computers, you can do a blend of both.
Explain to your students that they will have 2 minutes with each book.  During that time, they can choose to read the introduction or first chapter, read the book jacket, or flip through and look at chapter titles and pictures.  The goal during this time is to discover whether this is a book that they would like to read.  It is okay if it isn’t a book they would want to read…the goal is to find out which book they are most excited about.  After the two minutes is up, sound a bell that signifies it is time to switch.  Before they switch, students can quickly make a note of the Title and rate the book.  Continue on until students have had 2 minutes with each book.  Collect the notes students have made and formulate book groups based on interest in the book.
I’ve added a few extra pages to our Extreme Speed Booking website including places where students can explore other books that they may like to read (Shelfari and Book Wink).  I’ve also added a form that book groups can fill out as they are reading.  The form gets emailed directly to the teacher.  Our students will probably be blogging quite a bit of reflection about their reading.  I thought it might also be useful to have a place for groups to answer questions, make comments, or update their teacher with their progress as a group.
@michellek107 created a Google form for her students to fill out while they are speed booking.  Great idea!  She is so smart.  This will make it easy to collect all of the responses in one place to form groups.
Suggestions for books:
  • Choose books from a variety of levels, make sure you have a few book options for each reading level in your classroom.
  • Choose a variety of authors and genres, this is a great way to expose students to authors and genres they don’t normally seek out on their own.
  • Set up classroom computers with some book trailer videos from a site like Book Wink…this is a great “introduction” to a book or genre and acts much like a movie trailer.
  • Choose a variety of books from ONE author.  After students have completed reading in their smaller groups, they can come back together and do an author study as a whole class; each group contributing something a little different.
  • Choose a variety of books from ONE genre.  Students can read books in the smaller groups but discuss common features of the genre as a class.
  • Choose a variety of books on a similar topic.  Students can read books in the smaller groups and then discuss the different character perspectives, author approaches, etc.  This would be really neat to do with historical fiction, Holocaust fiction, etc.
  • Use non-fiction books that reinforce topics and themes that you are using in other academic areas.
  • Use biographies of presidents, change makers, authors, etc.   Students can learn about a specific person in the smaller reading group and share what they have learned with the larger group later.
Tips:   Extreme Speed Booking is a lot of fun with tech, but equally doable without tech!  If you have access to a 1-1 tech environment, or can reserve the computer lab for a round of speed booking, you can use my technique above.  Weebly makes it very easy to do this!
If you haven’t already, check out Shelfari and create a virtual bookshelf of book recommendations for your class or school.  You can see our Shelfari shelf for Anastasis below.  If you teach 3rd-12th grade it is worth checking out Book Wink!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Extreme Speed Booking in  your classroom!

57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day

Kelly Tenkely8 Comments on 57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day9297 views

Did you know that today is National Literacy Day?  It is!  I think that literacy is something to celebrate, being literate is a gift I enjoy every day but don’t stop to appreciate nearly enough.  In honor of National Literacy Day, I thought I would share my favorite technology enhanced literacy tools.  In no particular order, here are my favorite ways to celebrate literacy.  What are your favorites?

1.  Save the Words– an excellent site that values language, vocabulary, and words.

2. Grammaropolis– an enchanting site that teaches students parts of speech through character and story.

3. Signed Stories– an online story collection accompanied by British Sign Language, pictures, and sound.

4. Learn Direct– where students can be the star in their own online storybook.

5. Inkless Tales– a literacy website with a beautiful mission statement “You can do anything. Try, try again. Don’t give up. Experiment. Write, draw, explore and more.”

6. Storybird- a beautiful collaborative storytelling website.

7. My English Images– images that illustrate difficult vocabulary and language concepts.

8.  Lexipedia– a visual dictionary and thesaurus.

9.  Tikatok– Students become published authors with Tikatok

10. Free Reading– an open source instructional program to help you teach early literacy.

11. Word World– a great site for kindergarten and first grade letter and word recognition.

12. Reading Rockets– free reading guides for teachers to improve reading achievement of kids.

13. Super Why! – a site that helps kids gain important foundational reading skills such as alphabet, word families, spelling, comprehension, and vocabulary.

14.  Get Ready to Read!– a great site that helps teachers equip children with the basic skills necessary for learning to read.

15. Roy the Zebra– Excellent site for emerging readers.

16. Fable Vision– the beautiful virtual town filled with stories and games.

17. Kidoons– brings time honored tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Thorton Burgess, and more to life.

18.  GameGoo– fun educational games that help students develop reading and language skills.

19. Read Write Think– a collection of online student resources that support literacy learning k-12.

20. Seussville– the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss brought to life.

21. Digital Booktalk– book trailers that will whet your students appetite for a good book.

22. Storybook Web– a website based on popular children’s stories where students can listen to author’s reading excerpts.

23.  Mee Genius– where students can read books, personalize them, and share them with a friend.

24. Stage’d- a tool that helps students tell stories digitally.

25. Kerpoof– where students can create their own storybooks, comics, and movies.

26.  Lightning Bug– “your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END.”

27. ePubBud– for publishing your very own ebooks.

28. Magic Treehouse- a wonderful website where students can engage in the popular book series.

29. The Stacks– a wonderful creation by Scholastic that excites students about reading.

30. The World of Peter Rabbit– an absolutely captivating site based on the work of Beatrix Potter.

31.  My Hippo Has the Hiccups– a free poetry ebook by Kenn Nesbitt.

32. Weboword– a visual vocabulary site.

33. National Geographic Young Explorer– non-fiction for the primary classroom from National Geographic.

34.  Online Audio Stories- an impressive collection of free audio stories.

35. Story Nory– another collection of free audio books for kids.

36.  Skratch Track– a virtual bookshelf for primary students.

37.  Picture Book Maker– a place for students to create picture books.

38. Story Cove– a collection of stories from around the world.

39.  Skype an Author Network– connects teachers, students, and authors over Skype.

40.  Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos– animated vocabulary videos.

41.  My Story Maker– a website where students are in charge of the interactive story.

42. Book Wink– an incredible site that motivates students to read through podcasts and web video.

43. Scholastic Story Starters– a tool that generates writing ideas.

44. Telescopic Text– a site that expands a sentence to demonstrate descriptive writing.

45.  The Tale of Despereaux Adventure- a beautiful interactive story book.

46. Literactive- leveled guided readers, comprehensive phonics activities, and supplemental reading material.

47. Pic Lits- a creative writing site based on pictures.

48.  Speakaboos– a collection of online stories and ebooks.

49. Animailia– a site based on the popular book by Graeme Base.

50. Mrs. P’s Magic Library– an absolutely enchanting site that celebrates books and reading.

51.  Free Rice– practice vocabulary while helping others fight hunger.

52. Shelfari– a virtual bookshelf.

53. Read to Feed- Heifer International reading project for kids.

54. Into the Book– an outstanding site that teaches reading strategies for comprehension.

55. Google Lit Trips– exploring literature using Google Earth.

56. Starfall– a must see website for phonics.

57. Book Adventure– a free reading motivation program.

But the very best way to celebrate National Literacy Day…read a book!

10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on 10 Technology Enhanced Alternatives to Book Reports6247 views

Traditional book reports can kill the love of reading, keep your students motivated and still assess their understanding with these 10 technology enhanced alternatives that I wrote for http://theapple.com.  

Kelly Tenkely | TheApple.com

The most dreaded word in school reading for students: book reports. Teachers assign them, viewing them as a necessary component of assessing reading comprehension. Book reports can be a contributing factor to ‘readicide’. “Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.” http://stenhouse.com/html/readicide.htm. So, how can we as teachers continue to monitor our students understanding of reading material without killing the love of reading? Enter technology. Technology can help bring some excitement and creativity to the traditional book report while still displaying students understanding of reading.

1. Let students create a cartoon version of the book they have just finished.

Use a tool like Creaza http://creaza.com, Piki Kids http://pikikids.com, or Kerpoof http://kerpoof.com to inject a little fun into the book report. Students can create a short cartoon or comic strip summarizing the book they just read. Encourage students to include key characters from the book as well as the problem and solution. If there are no appropriate background templates to fit the book they have just finished, students can tell the story in the form of an interview between two characters or choose a cartoon character to review the book. This alternative to book reports is particularly appealing to boys who are already excited about graphic novels.

2. Let students create a short video clip about the book.

Creaza http://creaza.com, Kerpoof http://kerpoof.com, and Xtra normal text to movie http://xtranormal.com are all great online tools that allow students to create short movie clips. Students can create an interview type show where they interview characters in the book, create a short movie trailer for the book, or actually have characters act out portions of the book.

3. Create a virtual poster advertising the book.

Think about movie posters, they give just enough information to give you a taste of what the movie will be about. They also contain information such as the title of the movie, the major actors, and a rating. Students can use Glogster http://glogster.edu to create an online book poster that acts as an advertisement for the book they just read. Students should include the title and author of the book, key characters, use pictures that support the story line, and create a tag line that will make others want to read the book.

4. Encourage students to create their own virtual bookshelves with Shelfari http://shelfari.com.

Shelfari is not only a great alternative to book reports, it is also a nice alternative to reading logs. Shelfari allows students to display books that they have read on a virtual bookshelf. This site enables students to connect with other students and teachers, sharing book recommendations and reading reviews. Shelfari provides the ability to create online book clubs and discussions. Inspire students with similar interests to start a book club where they read and discuss together. When students finish reading a book they can add it to their bookshelf, rate the book, and write a short review of the book for others to read. The collaborative component makes it easy to keep up with what students are reading and to measure understanding. It also allows teachers to recommend books to students based on what they are currently reading. This is a great way to keep your students engaged in their reading and ensures they will always have great suggestions for new books to keep them reading.

5. Book Adventure http://bookadventure.org is an online reading motivation program.

Teachers create student accounts on Book Adventure. In the student account students can research books based on their reading level, age, and interests. They get a convenient printable list of books that match their level and interests. The list includes the ISBN, Title, and author. This makes it easy for students to head to the library and hunt down new reading material. After students have read a book, they can log onto their Book Adventure account and take a 10 question multiple choice quiz based on the book they read. Students can take each quiz multiple times and must get 8 or more questions correct to earn points to purchase prizes from the Book Adventure store. Each students score is automatically sent to the Book Adventure teacher gradebook along with the number of times the quiz was taken. Students earn and save up quiz points to purchase fun goodies from the Book Adventure store. Students can get everything from a 6 month subscription to Highlights magazine to a chocolate bar from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. This is a completely FREE program for students and schools to participate in. Book Adventure has a great teacher area with ideas for encouraging reading as well as certificates to print out to recognize good readers and notes for parents with the students latest reading progress.

6. Bookcasting is a recorded audio podcast about a book.

A bookcast is a movie trailer-like audio review of a book that students can create and share with one another. Free online tools such as Audacity http://audacity.com, G Cast http://gcast.com, or Pod Bean http://podbean.com make recording audio and sharing simple. Bookcasts let students be creative and provide them with a great sense of audience. It has the added benefit of acting as a book review to excite other students about reading. Before students create their own bookcast, find some radio movie trailers of current kids movies online for students to listen to as an example.

7. Allow students to create a timeline of events in the story they just read in an online timeline.

Capzles http://capzles.com is an interactive timeline creator. Students can add photos, video, audio and text to their timeline to support telling the story sequentially. Themes, colors, backgrounds, and background music can be added to further personalize the timeline. Timelines have the ability to be shared with other students and teachers.

8. Wikis are an excellent place for students to share book reviews.

Wetpaint http://wetpaint.com, PBWorks http://pbworks.com, and Zoho Wiki http://zoho.com/wiki are outstanding online wikis where students can write reviews about books they have read and share them with other students. Create a classroom book review wiki where all students can logon and add books that they are reading with reviews. The wiki could act like a classroom review column for books. Students can both contribute and read book reviews. By the end of the school year you will have a wiki full of great book reviews! Before students contribute to the book review wiki, read some movie reviews from the local newspaper. Encourage students to point out key elements of a good review.

9. Excite and motivate students to read with Book Wink http://bookwink.com.

This incredible website motivates students in 3rd to 8th grade to read using fun podcasts and web videos. The video book talks range from 3-4 min. in length and introduce students to a topic or genre and the books that exhibit the topic well. Students can watch a video and then search books by grade, subject, author, or title. After students read a book, they can create their own book talk using a web cam or video camera. The student book talks could be shared on websites like Viddler http://viddler.com or Fliggo http://fliggo.com so that other students can watch and comment on the book or topic.

10. Voice Thread http://voicethread.com is an amazing site that allows students to create web 2.0 slide shows that become interactive and collaborative.

This is a great place for students to discuss common genres and books online. Students can create a slideshow summary of their book with pictures, audio, and text. Other students can leave text, audio, or drawn comments on the book reviews. Voice Thread would be a great place to begin online classroom book clubs.

Technology brings interest back into reading and helps students continue to find reading that they enjoy while providing the teacher with feedback about student reading comprehension. These are great alternatives to book reports that will keep your students from ‘readicide’. Most of the above tools have the added benefit of being able to be embedded into a classroom blog, website, or wiki. All student projects can be collected, organized, and viewed in one place. It doesn’t get better than this!