I went 1:1 last year with Chromebooks. It didn’t take long for me to recognize that I needed a some resources to make my Chromebooks as effective as I wanted to. The younger grades in my school have a digital reader, but their subscription only goes through third grade. I needed a way for my students to access a library of both fiction and informational texts.
I had a few informational texts available in my classroom. I have an in-class leveled library that has one or two informational texts per guided reading level. So long as I only wanted my kids to read 2-3 informational texts during the course of the year on topics that may or may not have been directly related to my Science, Math, or Social Studies core, then I was set. I had to choose between differentiating instruction to match students’ abilities, or integrate the few good titles I had that tied to my core. Differentiating while integrating simply wasn’t an option.
Then I ran into MyOn. On the surface MyOn is just an outstanding library of digital books. Anyone who has used it for more than a few weeks knows that it is much more than that. As a digital library, MyOn is outstanding. There are thousands of books, both fiction and informational texts available to my students. Now I don’t just have to rely on the 2-3 texts about random topics, but I have a few dozen titles with a variety lexile level on each science standard. I can now differentiate while integrating Science, Math, and Social Studies curriculum without breaking a sweat.
Then I got into the data. Every two weeks my students are given a benchmark assessment that gives them their lexile level. Then the system guides them to books that are both on their interest level and their lexile level. Students spend less time looking for books and more time reading. Instead of Netflix browsing (you know what I’m talking about, flipping through Netflix, never choosing a movie, and then settling on The Office again), kids open books on their level and interest, and read.
But it isn’t just an independent reader either. I split my kids into groups according to their lexile levels (which are updated regularly), and give them assignments to read books (which tie directly to our science unit), and they collaborate as they finish the assignments (like I describe here).
MyOn has completely modified (read more about modification and the SAMR model) how my literacy instruction looks. It isn’t just a substitution of our paper books, and it isn’t just an augmented independent reader. It has modified my instruction by using meaningful, recent data to inform my instruction, give students the tools to collaborate, and engaged readers in ways they haven’t engaged before.
Now to redefine a task that was previously unimaginable… Having kids create their own non-fiction page?
