Flipping ELA-- More than Students Reading Books at Home

I had the wonderful privilege to present at the 2015 NJEA Convention in the Flipped Learning Theater with the pioneering Jon Bergmann and the ever-enthusiastic Marc Seigel. I presented two sessions:  Flipping the English Language Arts Classroom and Technology Tools for Flipped Reading.

@KtBkr4 is about to rock her Flipping the Lang Arts Classroom. #NJEAConv #flipclass pic.twitter.com/PSNPEPusDE

— Marc Seigel (@DaretoChem) November 5, 2015

Learning some new things from @KtBkr4 at her "Edtech Tools to Flip Reading" presentation #njconv pic.twitter.com/JtRdQiphi9

— Mr. Dan Dreher (@Mr_Dreher) November 6, 2015

My slide decks are below. I'm really proud of my visual design for these slides! Slide Carnival has some excellent templates that can be customized. Be sure to click on the hyperlinks within the slides for access to resources. Lots of goodies!


Speaking with Jon Bergmann at the convention for his BAM radio show, "The Flip Side," the question was broached, "Well, isn't English already flipped?  Read at home and come to class ready to apply?"  My answer is a resounding NO! For some students, reading is the difficult task, and I want to be present with my students for the difficult tasks. I can Flip 101 (aka replace live, direct instruction with video or tech tool) many things in the classroom, including reading, but I need to make sure that students are adept at the skills when we are face to face before I send them home with flipped tasks to complete.  The "face-to-face before do at home" time will vary depending on the content.  For some material, I need 5 minutes to make sure students are adept, but for other skills or content, my students may need multiple class periods to demonstrate that they are proficient independent learners.

I am a big fan of the "in-class" flip:  allow students to practice self-pacing and independent learning in class rather than at home.  Remember, the primary premise of Flipped Learning is to make the best use of face-to-face time with your students. So if this means they need guided, independent learning (I know, such an oxymoron) prior to unsupervised, independent learning (I know, redundant), then that is what I will do.  The flip at home will not be successful, and we will lose precious face-to-face time if I don't scaffold the process and gradually release control to the students.

The Flipping ELA Slide Deck features some activities and resources for how to Flip 101 and Mastery Flip an English Class. I've learned so much from my Flipped ELA peeps that I can not take credit for all the things in the slides. While I use what I share on the slides with my students, the original ideas may have come from one of the phenomenal flipping ELA teachers listed towards the end of the slide deck.



The Tech Tools for Flipping Reading will provide some examples of Flip 101 screencasts for modeling close reading, as well as edtech tools such as Booktrack Classroom and Curriculet for flipped reading instruction.  And make sure you listen to the interview with Jon Bergmann because I share how my students practice close reading using Google Docs as we Explore-Flip-Apply author's purpose and literary devices in texts.





Be sure to reply in the Comments to this post with your strategies for flipping your class or any questions you may have about how to flip!

Creating Curriculets with Students

Cheryl Morris asked me if students can create their own curriculets, embedding questions and quizzes inside a text. Her plan: have students work in groups or as individuals to create their own curriculets and share them with other students to read and answer the questions/quizzes-- like a suped-up literature circle! What a great idea to promote higher level thinking!

Screenshot of the opening of A Tale of Two Cities in Curriculet

However, student accounts and teacher accounts function differently in Curriculet, so while students can embed their own annotations in a text, they cannot add a layer of their own questions and quizzes.  But Cheryl's question got me thinking, and I have a workaround solution: set-up a couple of fake-teacher accounts where students can take turns creating curriculets.

Initially, I thought setting up one account for all students to access would work, but the security features will not allow multiple, simultaneous logins on the same account. Each fake-teacher account will need to have its own email address (running out of addresses to use, check out GMail's plus feature). I do NOT recommend each student creating his/her own fake-teacher account for managerial reasons. It would be too difficult to monitor 30 or 130 individual teacher accounts. The teacher should set up the fake-teacher account(s) prior to giving access to the students so that students can focus on creating/editing the curriculets and not be delayed or confused by set-up procedures.

Why wouldn't I want to give my students access to my teacher account on Curriculet?  Wouldn't that be easier?  My teacher account includes performance data from current and previous years.  I do not want students accessing the teacher dashboard.  The fake-teacher accounts are created so that they can access the curriculet-editor feature. The fake-teacher account will not have any active classes tied to it. As I outline in the steps below, students will share with the teacher the created curriculets and the teacher will assign the reading of the created-curriculets through his/her real teacher account that has groups and classes already set-up.

The Steps for Students-Created Curriculets:

1. The teacher creates the fake-teacher class accounts for students to use.
2. In the fake-teacher accounts, go to Curriculet's STORE and select the titles for which you want students to create curriculets, or in the LIBRARY upload a Google Doc or Word Document students will use to create the curriculet. Name each curriculet appropriately.
3. State the ground rules and objectives for usage and give students the username and password for the fake-teacher class accounts.
4. Students log in to Curriculet on the fake-teacher accounts and select the text(s) from the LIBRARY. I envision students creating curriculets for short stories, poetry, or excerpts of lengthy texts.  Multiple curriculets can be created for the same text.
5. Students embed their annotations, questions, and quizzes in the text.
6. When finished, the students SHARE the created-curriculet with the teacher by emailing the link (or to keep a record of the created-curriculets in the teacher's files, have students copy/paste the link to a Google Form/ Spreadsheet or LMS assignment). 
7. The teacher (in his/her real teacher account) adds the created-curriculets to his/her LIBRARY and assigns them to the class to read.
8. The teacher (in his/her real teacher account) monitors the students' reading of the created curiculets, checking for accuracy and (if he/she so chooses) shares with the creators the readers' performance data.

Want to see this process in action?  Watch the screencast below...

Thinking this through from a lesson-planning and implementation point of view, the teacher could provide the students with the specific guidelines for how many questions, annotations, and quizzes to embed. Or the teacher could let the students run free and have a reflective discussion after the curriculets are created where students analyze and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their creations. I like giving minimal directions so that I do not stifle student creativity and have an opportunity for metacognitive analysis, but the teacher can make that call. Users can make many versions of a curriculet layer for one text, so students could be creating curriculets for the same text at the same time. I suggest following a specific naming convention so that each curriculet version can be differentiated: Year Pd Group Name.  Example: 2015 Pd2 GroupA.

Keep in mind that many texts in the Curriculet Store come with the layer of questions, quizzes, and annotations already created, and tech-savvy students will be able to find them. So, I would make sure to have a clear purpose and objective for the student-created curriculets that goes beyond the assessment of comprehension. 

Thinking about time constraints, I do not recommend having students create their own curriculet for a lengthy novel unless the teacher is dividing the class up with each group focused on a specific section of the novel.  Again, each student or group should make his/her/its own curriculet layer starting at the assigned section (the teacher creates the curriculets for each section ahead of time). Do not try having all students working in the same curriculet at the same time. It won't work.

In order for this process to work, I recommend that the teacher monitors all accounts and does the set-up work ahead of time.  If students are focused on the task of creating the curriculets, there should be little room for shenanigans.

Have You Done Your Summer Reading?

Whenever I run into students during the summer months, I always ask them, "Have you done your summer reading yet?"  As an English teacher, it is an obligatory question.  But summer reading doesn't have to be a chore or a snore.

Summertime is my opportunity to catch up on my reading.  As much as I like to read for entertainment, I can't squeeze it in during the school year. I've become a binge reader: devouring 100s of pages in a single sitting during holidays, breaks, and summer.  Two Christmases ago, I finished the first Game of Thrones book in 24 hours because I could not put it down.  This summer I'm binging on the escapism of historical fiction and sci-fi/fantasy.

So far this summer I've read...

• Ernest Cline's Ready Player One-- anyone who grew up in the 1980s and played video games will love this one!
• Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth
• Andy Weir's The Martian
• Robert Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky
• Consuelo Saah Baeher's Three Daughters
• MJ Fletcher's soon to be released novella, Knights of Electricty
• Elizabeth Chadwick's The Summer Queen
• David Blixt's Prince's Doom, the latest book in his Star Cross'd series on the historical fiction of the Montague and Capulet feud in Romeo and Juliet
• Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad which captures Odysseus' wife Penelope's perspective

On my list of texts to read...

• Sara Gruen's At the Water's Edge (just waiting for the Kindle price to drop!)
• Khaled Hossein's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
• The Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard
• Ursla LeGuin's Lavinia

When it comes to reading professional texts, on my list are...

• Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer
• Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Kate Messner's 59 Reasons to Write

If I keep up my current pace of finishing a book ever 2-3 days, I should be able to cross off the titles on my list during the last month of my summer break.  When I shared the titles I've read this summer via Facebook, my husband (who is not a reader) jokingly asked if I read, The Housekeeper.  I have not!  Nor have I read the other books in the series: The Laundress and Dishwasher Diaries. There isn't any time to clean when I have so many books to read! 

What books are on your list?  Please comment with your suggestions for fiction and nonfiction texts-- keep me reading so I can avoid cleaning!

All non-Honors track students are assigned to read the same book per grade during the summer.  The titles were selected based on budgetary constraints. We have some copies that can be checked out by students and all of the titles can be read online via a free digital text or thru Curriculet's platform. On the first full school day, all students take a test on their assigned title and the score goes in the gradebook. Over years of trying to find the best way to manage a summer reading program, this was the easiest and least painful method.  But, does summer reading have to be painful for students?

As the only 9th grade Honors English teacher in my district, I have complete control over the summer reading assignment and strategically assign texts and activities for completion.  I purposely chose texts that would engage the students and align with concepts taught throughout the upcoming school year (see my Writing Map and Reading Map). My students read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Clive Barker's Abarat, and the school-assigned reading of John Steinbeck's The Pearl. Students are given paperback copies of Hobbit and Abarat, but are tasked with accessing a digital version of The Pearl.  Abarat and Hobbit balance each other: both a long epic texts that follow Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey steps, one with a female protagonist and the other feature a male protagonist.  While reading, students are to keep a reader's response chart, noting their observations and connections to the text.  I do not give a set number or length of entries because I want to see what the students will give me.  When we return to school, students will take a quiz on each of the titles to check for understanding and I will award them completion points for the chart.  We use the summer reading titles as a basis for learning about literary analysis and mentor texts for creative writing throughout the first marking period.

In addition to the fiction texts, my Honors students are also taking part in Curriculet's and USA Today's Summer Reading Challenge.  Students are to select at least 10 articles (I assigned them at least 10, but they can read more than that number if they want to win prizes) and answer the questions embedded in the text.  Each article is tagged with one Common Core Curriculum Standard and contains 3-4 questions that check for understanding using the lens of the standard.  Before my students ever set foot in my classroom, I am getting to know them as they show me when, how, what they are reading in Curriculet.  I can track their progress, see what articles they selected, and monitor their performance. I can see who is a procrastinator and who is an overachiever. I can use the data to create lessons that will bolster their weaknesses and meet their interests.  Students are motivated to read can also win prizes: folks who read at least 3 articles in a day are entered into the daily drawing to win a pair of Beats Headphones; those who read 3 articles a day for a number of days during a week are entered in a weekly drawing for an Apple Watch.  And there are district prizes too! One of my incoming freshmen won one of the daily prizes last week:

Congrats to the daily winner of the #SummerReadingChallenge - a student from Southern Regional School District! @KtBkr4

— Curriculet (@curriculet) July 20, 2015

All of this makes me wonder about the value of summer reading.  Is it for pleasure? Is it for an assignment? Is it to win prizes? I'm curious to know how you or your district handles summer reading. Let us know in the comments!

Reading for the Jaded Student & All: Curriculet partners with USA Today

I'm super stoked for today's announcement from Curriculet.

Curriculet has proven its worth and merit as I flip summer and independent reading, PARCC prep, and novel studies. Building on what they already do well--creating authentic reading experiences for students and behind the scenes data for teachers to use to drive instruction--  Curriculet is announcing a partnership with USA Today:

"Now, students and teachers can access relevant and timely news from USA TODAY through Curriculet's dynamic reading platform. In addition to its free on-demand digital library filled with popular books, Curriculet now allows students to read news articles with embedded assessments that develop literacy skills and build subject area knowledge. Known as "curriculets," these integrated checkpoints focus on specific skills and Common Core Standards.

Every day, Curriculet delivers articles curated for classrooms and pre-loaded with interactive layers of instruction that include annotations, rich media and question sets. Every article includes three differentiated layers targeted to elementary, middle and high school reading levels so that each student can interact with the text.

Curriculet’s real-time reporting feature lets teachers track student achievement in every assignment. Teachers can assess progress on standards and literacy skills, track time spent on-task, and identify where individual learning gaps are. 

Whereas other news services for students offer outdated news stories, Curriculet’s partnership with USA TODAY makes it possible to supply students with articles the day after publication, in their original form."

Here's why I am excited about this announcement:  Curriculet is providing me with another way to reach struggling readers and jaded students.  To be honest, I'm not worried about my Honors students-- they will read whatever I give them--but, I'm worried about getting and keeping my lower-level freshmen and disaffected seniors reading. Asking them to sustain their attention for a whole novel is a Herculean feat. They often give up before they ever get started, intimidated by the length and preconceived notions about reading for class. But reading one, heck, even two short, high-interest articles a day (and answering a few questions and clicking on a few annotations) will build a daily habit for reading because they can do it.

Curriculet's partnership will enable me to give my students relevant and current SHORT reading pieces that appeal to their interests AND provides me with data on their skills--and I don't have to do any extra work. Like reading the newspaper, I can keep my students up to date on current events, sports, national news, international events, and my favorite category, "Good News" featuring positive focused human interest stories.

Selection of articles updated daily with older ones still available.

My seniors who usually fight me on EVERYTHING I ask them to do can't complain about reading a short article.  My reluctant freshmen who don't feel like they are competent readers can feel competent with Curriculet. There's no harm; there's nothing to fear.  High interest, appropriate reading level-- read it, enjoy it, and answer a few questions for me...  nothing too arduous.  And since each article targets one specific Common Core Standard at a time, I can keep an eye on their skills and alignment to the standards with little effort on my part.

Data on student reading performance:
available by student & question

Beta-testing the USA-Today feature two weeks ago, it was seamless to choose articles and assign them to my students. Clicking on USA Today in the navigation ribbon, I selected and assigned texts the same way as I normally do in Curriculet.   Since the students are already familiar with reading via Curriculet, it didn't seem like anything new to them either. I started off with articles on Mars exploration, high school basketball, and the movie American Sniper.

Whole class progress bar for easy viewing

In each of my 5 classes the same thing happened each day: my better-performing, compliant students got started right away, opened the articles, and I listened to them chat with their neighbors... "Hey, this is cool what the team did for this girl. Reminds me of the Challenger League we have here at Southern... Oh, I want to see that American Sniper movie...  Wow, it is based on a true story?... Whoa they showed this movie in Baghdad? People had to freak!... What?1 There was a contest to go to Mars? That is crazy!... I think it would be cool to be part of that...No way dude, I'm happy here on Earth." 

From the article, What moviegoers in Baghdad think of American Sniper,
students answer questions embedded in the text.

Overhearing the conversations, my lower-performing, not-always-compliant students were intrigued and, not wanting to miss out, opened Curriculet and started reading. I circulated around the room checking in with groups of students and then called the class together for a wrap up discussion. We talked about perspective and audience perception, inclusion of special needs folks, and setting and achieving long term goals.  All of that was accomplished with three short, nonfiction articles. On days two and three of our beta-testing, I didn't need to prod any students to get started, they jumped right into reading new articles and we had a repeat of engaging class discussions.  The positive energy carried into the rest of the period as we switched to reading Hamlet (seniors) or The Odyssey (also in Curriculet).

I really like that I'm not sending my students to another site for nonfiction, digital reading.  Within Curriculet, students can read anything and everything from contemporary YA lit novels from publishers to canonical texts to documents I upload to current nonfiction articles.  With its broad service offerings, Curriculet once again proves to me that is the only digital reading tool I need to get all my students reading.

I envision using the Curriculet-USA Today articles as a daily Do Now/Bell Ringer activity for all of my classes. Students enter the classroom, grab a Chromebook or sign on their smartphones and spend the first few minutes of class reading, answering questions, and discussing the articles with their neighbors. We could continue to do a quick round-robin discussion of the articles and what they found interesting in each. Students are staying informed on current events AND demonstrating valuable life reading skills.

There are so many MORE activities I could do with Curriculet & USA Today!
I'd love to read about your ideas, too. Please comment and share!

Driving over Tukey's Bridge

This summer I spent time with family and wrote content for titles that will appear in Curriculet's premium store.  One such title was the young adult novel Delirium by Lauren Oliver where love is considered a disease in a dystopian future. 

I greatly enjoyed working on creating questions, quizzes, and annotations for a young adult title, applying all that I've learned from teaching canonical texts like A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Romeo & Juliet, Young Adult literature should have a place in the academic classroom.  Young adult literature is the bait and hook for reading.  Dr. Jung Kim from Lewis University makes the case here for young adult literature in the classroom. There are also some examples of canonical and young adult pairings. In creating the curriculet layer for Delirium, I examined the text just as I would with a canonical text: narration, structure, diction, plot, setting, etc.  

While the syntax of Delirium is not difficult, I targeted Common Core Standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.9 in the creation of the questions and annotations: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work.  Through out the novel, author Lauren Oliver makes allusions to Romeo & Juliet and sets the story in Portland, Maine. While author Lauren Oliver doesn't exactly copy the story of Romeo & Juliet, she does emphasize similar themes and conflicts: forbidden love, man versus society, and personal growth. The main character, Lena, begins to question the restrictive society in which she lives as she develops a relationship with another character, Alex. Not only can I have students make connections between Delirium and Romeo & Juliet, but also to 1984 and any other text where a character realizes that the world in which he/she has lived is not as it seems. If I want my students to be independent and analytic thinkers, I need them to have opportunities to do so by giving them texts that connect to them FIRST and then using the young adult text as a bridge to understand and connect with the canonical texts. 

I applaud Curriculet for working to evolve reading in the digital era and making ALL texts more accessible for readers.  Renting publisher-controlled digital texts for my classroom will be much more budget-friendly than asking my supervisor to purchase class-set paperback copies-- and I don't have to worry about collecting and replacing paperback copies over time. While I could send students to the library to check out individual copies of the book, I would not have enough books for the whole class to read, and even though I could have students choose their own books for independent reading,  what I want is to have students reading more of the same books together.

So back to Tukey's Bridge.... Delirium is set in Portland, Maine, and Oliver continually references real locations found in the city, in addition to adapting them to suit the vision of the dystopic future. The statue of the Governor that Lena and Hana run past in Delirium is really Our Ladies of Victories statue in Monument Square. This connection provides opportunity to discuss how societies memorialize heroes and students can explore the monuments in their hometowns. In addition, if students traveled to locations mentioned in the text, they can walk in the shoes of characters. 

As my family traveled to Maine for a week-long summer vacation in Bar Harbor, following 295 North through Portland, we drove over Tukey's Bridge and past Back Cove.  I craned my next to spot the Promenade and envisioned Lena swimming with Alex on East End Beach. I had a moment of double vision as we rocketed along at 70 miles per hour, I imagined that we were really travelling in to the Wilds.

#Flipclass Workflow: Differentiated Instruction

Chatting this morning with Stacy Dawes on Voxer in the #ELA Flip group, we were discussing ways in which we can differentiate and diversify our instruction for students, especially those who are ESL/ELL immersed in mainstream classes.  Thinking about how to use technology to differentiate instruction in the flipped ELA classroom, we came up with the following ideas:

• In your main Edmodo class, create small groups in which the students are leveled, then post tailored assignments to each of the small groups.  If all students are working with the same content, they will not know that they are receiving different versions of the same assessment or activity. Resources to assist that particular group of students can also be posted. Students can be in multiple small groups, but they can only see the content posted to the groups they are members of. 

• Using Edmodo's quiz feature, create quizzes designed for each small group level. All questions and quizzes are banked in Edmodo, so it is super easy to create custom quizzes for groups of students. Assign the custom quiz to the Edmodo appropriate small group.  Keep in mind that Edmodo quizzes do not have to be used as traditional test assessments.  Thinking about the SAMR model, the Edmodo quiz feature can be used for quick homework checks, group quizzes, and summative assessments.  

• Use Curriculet to differentiate reading instruction. Much like Edmodo, in Curriculet, teachers can create multiple versions of layered annotations, quizzes, and questions for texts and all versions are saved in the teacher library. Teachers can assign canonical texts or upload documents from their files or the web into Curriculet's interface meeting both literature and informational text reading standards. To manage assigning the texts to the students, I recommend creating reading groups by level instead of traditional classes.  Managing classes in Curriculet is very easy and students can be in multiple classes from multiple teachers at the same time.  So rather than having a Period 2 class in Curriculet, name your Curriculet classes to differentiate the reading level. For example, Level I, Level II, or Reading Group A, Reading Group B, etc. Assign the the particular custom curriculet to the particular group and track student performance.

• Newela could also be used to differentiate informational text reading instruction since articles can be adjusted to meet student lexile levels. Newsela is an excellent resource for differentiating current event articles. Where as Curriculet anchors the text with the question and quizzes being adjusted, Newsela enables the text itself to be adjusted to meet student reading ability.  Students also take quizzes to assess their reading comprehension. 

As far as classtime is concerned, students could complete differentiated instructional tasks on asynchronous working days or at home.  Teaching 9th graders, I do not give them free reign, but instead give them small chunks to work asynchronously, usually about 2-3 days at a time.  We will start a task in class and then homework becomes whatever the students need to finish.  If they were productive during classtime, then homework can be avoided.

While the above ideas are focused on ELA instruction, they could also be applied to all subject areas.  What ideas do you have for using technology to differentiate instruction?  Share! 

#CUE14 Pictures using Loupe Collage

I wanted a creative way to compile and share my pictures from my recent trip with Curriculet to CUE 2014 conference in Palm Springs, California. Searching through the Chrome Web Store, I found Loupe Collage. Similar to creating a customized word cloud in Tagxedo, Loupe Collage allows users to pull in pictures from Facebook, Google +, Drive, Dropbox, Twitter, the web, Instagram, and files (ok, everywhere) to create a collage where the shape and background can be customized. Once the collage is created, users can share it via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Gmail, Drive, link, and embed.

I am really impressed with the ease of this tool. I grabbed all my pictures from CUE and pulled in those that others took and shared with me to create the collage below.  It took me just a few minutes to create!  While I love social photography, I do get overwhelmed trying to manage the photos, and while I have automatic backup of my pictures via Facebook and Google +, I don't often do much with the pictures after they are backed up. Using Loupe Collage, I can create a collage for each special event and share it with my colleagues, friends and family who were also there. To see each image, simply hover over it to enlarge.

Rather appropriate, this is my 100th blog post.  While I write about edtech tools and activities, what is more important are the people and enriching experiences. Edtech is more so about fostering connections than the tool itself. The technology brings us all together: friends, colleagues, companies,  we are all digital compatriots. Thank you all for reading, sharing, and collaborating.

#CUE14 People Pictures

I need a smartphone with a better front camera, and I need to perfect my selfie-taking skills, because I am HORRIBLE! With that being said, I had such a blast at #CUE14 and seeing all of my favorite California Twitter folks and hanging out in Curriculet's booth telling EVERYONE who passed how much I LOVE my favorite digital reading tool of all time! Dude, seriously.  #NoHyperbole 

 

  

Also, another selfie with @KtBkr4 at #cue14 because why not? pic.twitter.com/fbKwPtLM1e
— Cheryl Morris (@guster4lovers) March 22, 2014

So this happened. After @willkimbley admired my thinglink. @KtBkr4 #cue14 #spatula pic.twitter.com/eVNmxBsctD
— Cheryl Morris (@guster4lovers) March 22, 2014

All of the #cue14 gang (except @jstevens009) @ls_karl @sampatue @crystalkirch @KtBkr4 @bennettscience @thomasson_engl pic.twitter.com/UY5FTc3RkN
— Cheryl Morris (@guster4lovers) March 22, 2014

All of the #cue14 gang (except @jstevens009) @ls_karl @sampatue @crystalkirch @KtBkr4 @bennettscience @thomasson_engl pic.twitter.com/UY5FTc3RkN
— Cheryl Morris (@guster4lovers) March 22, 2014

Using Curriculet for Short Reading Texts & PARCC Prep

My all time favorite tool for digital reading is Curriculet because of its versatility and ease of use (oh, and the price: FREE!). I can assign novels, poems, short stories, and current event articles for my students to read, and they can answer Common Core aligned questions and quizzes in the text.  Since it is web-browser based, Curriculet can be used on any device or computer which is a must for my BYOD, 1:1 one day a week with Chromebooks classroom.

Whether you are signing in with your own email, using the Edmodo app, or signing in with Google, accessing your Curriculet is simple. Go to the website and log in or in Edmodo, launch the Curriculet app.




While Curriculet can be used in the Language Arts classroom for flipping reading instruction of novels, any subject area teacher can use Curriculet for implementing Common Core aligned reading of short texts.

• Science teachers can pull articles from the web into Curriculet's reading platform.  Check out this curriculet on Nobel Scientists bringing Chemistry into Cyberspace. 
• History folks can assign primary documents with annotations and questions embedded in the historical source. Check out a Curriculet I made for the Declaration of Independence, which my students read in conjunction with our study of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. 
• Language Arts teachers of all grades can assign poems such as Jabberwocky for seamless integration of poetry into their curriculum.
• Anyone who wants to give their students reading short passages can access Curriculet's ever-growing library of ready-to-use current event curriculets. Take a look at this curriculet I used with my students during the Olympics. 

Since many titles, especially in the current event section, are ready to use curriculets with questions and annotations already in embedded, I don't have to spend extra prep time creating them. I can just assign and let my students read! No matter the subject area, there is no easier tool for implementing reading instruction in your class. My students are reading more, more often, and I can see their progress and performance.

In addition, the digital literacy and navigation skills they are using while reading with Curriculet helps prepare my students for the PARCC testing that is coming (ugh.).  While the visual design is different, the skills the students need for being able to navigate through the digital PARCC tests can be practiced using Curriculet.

I can get my students acclimated to digital reading and writing without stressing them out.  By increasing the frequency with which we read online, the students will perform better because they are more comfortable with the technology. I can also scaffold the process and increase the difficulty level of the texts so that when they get to difficult passages and questions on the PARCC they won't shut down, but instead use the strategies I have taught them for breaking down the text and finding the answer.  While I am not in favor of testing or teaching to a test, I can unobtrusively prepare my students by getting them reading more often with Curriculet.

I can't stop stop talking about Curriculet (seriously), and if you swing by the Curriculet booth at CUE 2014 (PLEASE DO!!!), I will personally show you how Curriculet has transformed my classroom and revitalized my reading instruction. 

Flying thru Social Learning Theory

My life-time flying experience is fairly limited: senior trip to Disney in high school,  a 1 once a year training trip to Ft. Lauderdale with my college swim team, a vacation to California 15 years ago when I first started teaching, another vacation 13 years ago to the Dominican Republic, an Edmodo-sponsored trip to Edmodocon last August, and now, a trip to CUE 2014 in California sponspored by Curriculet. Having always flown with someone else, most recently Liz Calderwood, I always followed the lead of others. This time there is no one with me, and I have to rely on all that I learned from LIz and figure out what to do based on what I see everyone else doing.  This is social learning in action.

I’m not a herd animal, but I am always watching what others do. I am fiercely independent (rather appropriate considering my birthday) and I rarely like being told what to do (just ask my husband), so this experience of flying on my own is an experience in social learning: I must follow the rules and protocols of the airline business or I will not reach my destination, and the only way to know the rules and protocols is to follow the leads of others.

Thinking about prestige-bias as an adult learning in a new environment, I was selective with who I modeled. As a professional adult on a business trip, I was not going to model my behavior after young children, but instead those who looked like they were also business travellers. As I boarded the shuttle bus from the parking lot to the terminal falling in behind the woman in front of me and watching her place her bags, I first realized what I was doing: I was observing her behavior and mimicking it.  After disembarking and entering the terminal, I used what I remembered from my last trip with Liz to locate a check-in kiosk and confirm my flight--recalling retained information.  Then as I stood in the security line, I craned my neck to observe the scanning procedures: what needs to be in the bin, where do my shoes go, what can stay in the bag.

There is the stress of making sure I perform well-- while I can make some mistakes, if I don’t pass this “test,” I will not be able to continue on my journey--exactly aligning with the threshold guardians of the Hero’s Journey motif (not that I’m calling myself a hero-- oh no!). The Hero’s Journey motif is a journey of transformation and growth, and through the process of the journey the main character evolves. In my case, I’m evolving from an inexperienced traveller to a capable frequent flyer.

Speaking of social learning, I am documenting my trip for the folks back home-- my family and friends will know I’m safe by my myriad of Facebook posts and Tweets, and my students will feel my virtual  presence in the classroom as I share my travelogue on Edmodo. So not only am I demonstrating social learning, but I’m also letting others learn socially from me.

Sitting in the airport, I make the most of the free wifi
and stay in touch with my students on Edmodo.

Curriculet & Edmodo: #BetterTogether

This week Curriculet announced the release of an Edmodo app version that allows teachers and students to use Curriculet using their Edmodo credentials and classlists. The app is a portal or gateway and opens Curriculet inside Edmodo. I am ecstatic about this announcement!

I've been using Curriculet (previously known as Gobstopper) for two years now, and I can't say enough good things about it! Get me started talking and I can't stop! But my one tinsy, itsy-bitty complaint--which has nothing to do with Curriculet per say-- is that my students continually forget their username and password. While Google log-in is also available for Curriculet on the web, there is at least one student who struggles with remembering his/her log-in information. Trust me; I've taught them naming conventions for passwords, but there is always one. Now that Curriculet can be used inside Edmodo there is one less log-in for students to deal with.  I wish more web tools would partner with Edmodo for app creation, because not having to worry about logging in is so valuable for students to continue using a digital tool.

Also, class creation on my end of things is seamless with the Edmodo app. The classes or groups I have created in Edmodo will automatically be created in Curriculet with just a few clicks of adding the app to my groups. Click on this link to learn more about adding an Edmodo app to your group, and click on this link to learn more about launching an app in Edmodo.

Here is a behind the scenes look of my classes using Curriculet:

While Curriculet may seem geared towards the English Literature classroom, it can also be used to support reading informational and fictional texts in History, Science, and World Language classes. I bet you could even find texts to use in Math! Please let me know if you do! Take a look at the screencast Edmodo Support Ambassador Mr. Jose Angel made for Spanish-speaking users.

If you are wondering, why bother to use Curriculet or thinking that the traditional way of teaching and reading a text works. Take a look at this inforgraphic.  When reading Romeo & Juliet, Curriculet saves me 50 hours worth of administrative tasks.  Imagine freeing up 50 hours of your time!