Sway Summary Synthesis

Blended learning is more that tech integration; it is about tailoring or allowing students some control  to meet needs of diverse learners. Students benefit with explicit instruction about how to find the right Lexile levels for them with Newsela, Readworks, and/or Common Lit.

For the lesson below, ability grouping works well for partners or groups. When working

collaboratively, those discussions about the task model the internal discussions students will need to have in future independent work.

Google classroom? Use Google Slides!

1. Students select an article from a source. You can give specific text sets in Newsela to focus discussion on text that supports current novel being read.

2. Group reads, making notes for a GIST summary of who, what, where, when, why, how and then write a 20 word GIST. Blended learning involves online instruction: create a video modelling GIST summarizing with a common text.

3. Students create a collaborative Sway for the 5W and H and 20 word GIST. Since it is collaborative, they can all work on it at the same time. 

4. Students share in a discussion board in an LMS or a platform like Edmodo.

5. Students critique at least 2 articles. Reading the article, viewing the Sway, and responding with one of the stems:

• The summary needs more information about...
• The summary is strong because...
• I want to learn more about...
• This reminds me of...

6. Groups go back to revise Sway. 

Use template below if you wish! Have students click on website link and save to their own Office 365 account. 

A huge shout out to JMozi for being the perfect fellow ELA tech educator to collaborate with! Philosophical alignment + different enough brains to build upon each other + a mutual respect = this lesson we co-created!

Feature Writing as Summary

There are a hundred ways I could use the newspaper feature on www.fodey.com, but one of my favorites is the idea to have students respond to a chapter by writing a news article over it. I think it is great because it adds a creative aspect to retelling events. For my 8th graders, I would require that the headline needs to hint at a thematic issue or message.

I love how the website (1) lengthens the page so the end product can be short or long, (2) creates a downloadable image file that can be easily uploaded to Edmodo, Padlet, or incorporated into an appsmash, and (3) super authentic! It looks like the ink print from other newspapers has been left on it. This could create some really cool "historical" documents. I used to do a research project where students wrote diary entries from fictional or real characters in WWII. Wouldn't it be neat to have the end product of a research project like that be a fictional online archive?

For my example, I used The Outsiders. I had to research where the country may have been that the boys ran off to and what a viable date would be for the book, including the day of the week for that date. I had to imagine quotations from characters that seemed authentic to what we know about those characters.

Directions:
1. Think of what event happened in the book/chapter/story that would be front page worthy
2. Use the newspaper function on www.fodey.com (make sure to pause add blocker if you have that on your computer) to write a newspaper article that reveals the events
3. Use a maps website to come up with an accurate name for the newspaper and locations
4. Research the day of the week for an accurate date
5. Make sure your headline acknowledges a thematic component
6. In your summary, include a quotation from a character. This quotation should not be dialogue lifted from the text, but rather dialogue you create based on what you know about the characters and who a reporter would interview about this event

4 Ways to Use Discovery Education Board Builder

Did you know that if your district adopted Discovery Education resources, your students can create boards on DE Streaming that give students a chance to make what is akin to webpages? Students have a unique login and are already synced up to your teacher account making it really easy for students to create their boards and then share those boards with you. No printing out or submitting to an electronic dropbox needed. Students think it is pretty neat to be able to customize the page, embed video and pictures, and work with tools that are very similar to setting up a blog. This keeps them engaged as well as gives some good techy skills. So what is DE Streaming ideal for?

Revamping a Classic

Instead of doing a brochure/poster/PowerPoint project that has been done before, have students create DE Boards. Let's face it, by the time my students have reached me, they have made brochures for multiple subjects and PowerPoints galore. I was easily able to convert a career research brochure project into a DE Board by simply adding a multimedia component. Instead of pictures, students are able to use video segments as well.

Converting Boring Assignments to Engaging

Sample of Summary Board

I know that I can't make everything thrilling. Sometimes skill-building involves practicing a skill that is itself fairly boring. When it comes to a skill like summarization - something the kids have been working on for years - it can be a little "blah". Enter DE! After introducing a couple expository summarization skills in class, I had students apply them to video segments from DE. The videos definitely held their interest. They were studying space at the time, so students were able to research concepts from the unit that interested them. It was also a great way of me offering an extension to that leaning as students watched videos on concepts - like Space-Time - far beyond the required curriculum.

My Poetry Board

Publishing Work

The final stage of the writing process is publishing. Taping over 150 essays to a wall isn't really a viable or logical form of publishing. Having students convert their essays into DE pages (students could have 1 page and add to throughout the year or have a different page each essay) is a fun way of having the student feel like they really made something special. They can even press the print button, make it PDF, and post it to the class Edmodo or what have you. 

Creating Own Teacher Board

Create your own board for an interactive lesson complete with videos. You can also add documents, quizzes, and writing prompts.