First Grade eBooks

Why Innovation in Technology? (what is the purpose of the project? How does it fit into your classroom curriculum, school-wide tech initiative, etc?)

This project was created to help our students with fluency and prosody.

The Process (step by step guide to the project with text, images, and video)

In order to create our eBooks:

1. The teacher took pictures of the pages of a book and uploaded them into iMovie.
2. The students worked in a full group to learn how to record their voices in iMovie.
3. Individual students worked in partnerships with a new book to record a voiceover in iMovie of themselves reading the book. One partner pressed the record button while the other read. Then they switched for a new book.
4. The teacher edited the length of the pictures and audio recording to match.
5. Once the movie is finished it was shared in the theater and uploaded onto the class website so that it could be available to the community.

Assessment (self-reflection of observations, function v. modality- what worked for certain students, add picture of chart, how do students use chart to choose website (can students articulate reasons for choosing different centers or websites based on their own learning needs) assess which tools worked best and which tools were not as effective- what would I use again next year? How much modeling does each tool require?

The class begins by reading the book together on the smart board. We use the same text for our shared reading for a 3-day cycle. During this time, the children work on reading for meaning, using context clues to help them figure out tricky words, and reading fluently. After this 3-day cycle, two children are selected to read the book to make an ebook.

In order to have the shared reading on the smart board, I took pictures of the pages using my smartphone and cropped them before emailing them to myself to download onto the computer. I then dragged the pictures into Smart Notebook. In order to create the ebook I dragged the same pictures into iMovie. This helped to steam-line the process. Using familiar tools I was able to create the materials for the children to use.

Sebastien read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" for the ebook. While reading, Sebastien was able to self-monitor his fluency because he was given the opportunity to listen to each page he read and think about how it sounded. He recognized times when he read too slowly and times when he didn't read the words on the page correctly. At times he

During this process, the students are able to self-assess their fluency and can improve upon it in real time because they are recording page by page instead of the whole book at one time. While creating an ebook, students are able to hear themselves and have the opportunity to re-record a page in order to improve their accuracy, rate, expression and phrasing. The rubric can be used for them to self-monitor their reading fluency. This provided immediate assessment opportunities for my students.

After going through this process, students are becoming self-aware of the progress they have made in their reading. Hearing themselves gives them an opportunity to reflect on what they want to work on in reading.

After they have created an ebook, students may want to:

• try the process more independently
• try harder books
• mentor others
• attempt a cold read of a book

I would like to continue creating ebooks with my class in the future. After learning and becoming comfortable with iMovie, I would be able to mentor another teacher in how to do this project.

Next Steps (successes and challenges)

Have students share their ebooks with their peers.

Ebooks will be used in the future to assist struggling readers with their fluency. They will be able to read along while listening to the ebook.

The challenges were finding the time to work on the project with the students during the school day. First graders are not able to use this tool by themselves, so editing time was also necessary to create a finished product.

This project was successful because students were involved and excited to read. When listening to themselves read, they were motivated to read with fluency and expression.