Literacy Matters - Vol 21 - Winter 2021

on the right track. Writing daily and weekly assignments using a consistent format and having students turn in work the same way each time can also increase student time on task (Hattie, 2009). By providing clear directions in a consistent format, students don’t have to expend a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what it is they are supposed to be doing. Just like educators spend time teaching classroom routines at the beginning of the school year, teaching digital classroom routines benefits both the educator, by reducing the amount of questions they have to answer over and over again, and the student, by reducing cognitive load so they have more mental energy to attend to the content being taught (Woolfolk, 2019). Teachers know that students learn best when they are engaged (Brown & Green, 2016; Hattie, 2009; Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2014). Literacy is an inherently social act rich with opportunities for engagement through communication between creators, consumers, and contexts (Rosenblatt, 1978). Language, developed from social interaction, is the conduit for communication and learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Whether in a classroom or in digital spaces, opportunities to communicate in authentic ways must be provided to children. to provide opportunities for students to exercise voice and choice as they collaborate, communicate, and create. Following a short description of each literacy component, readers will find a non-exhaustive selection of digital tools that may be useful in each area, accompanied by a composite classroom example. The vignette is crafted from the authors’ experiences working with K-12 teachers throughout the state and should serve as a catalyst to spark further ideas. The possibilities for balanced literacy in the digital classroom are numerous and ever evolving. Literature Circles and Book Clubs Literature circles and book clubs are collaborative opportunities for children or adults to discuss a particular text. Literature circles are more scaffolded and typically have prescribed roles, such as literary luminator, discussion director, vocabulary enricher, summarizer, and connector (Cloonan, Paatsch, & Hutchinson, 2019), that students can employ to aid in meaning making, analyzing, and evaluating literature (Daniels, 1994). In book clubs, there are no role sheets and participants bring thoughts, ideas, and questions to be discussed in a more open-ended manner (O’Donnell-Allen, 2006). Both literature circles and book clubs can be held in classrooms, cafes, living rooms, or digital spaces and afford educators the opportunity to teach and assess comprehension strategies, and adjust instruction based on real-time data (Stover, Yearta, & Harris, 2016). Getting started with literature circles or book clubs in a digital space requires that the educator first selects the platform. Many schools have an LMS, learning management system, currently in place. Common learning management systems include Canvas, Blackboard, and Google Classroom. The discussion forums embedded in the LMS can function as a space for students to Below, the authors examine several components of a balanced literacy classroom and provide ideas for leveraging technology

discuss their books online. Using a blogging forum such as Kidblog, Blogger, or Edublogs (Yearta, Stover, & Sease, 2015) is an additional option. Furthermore, educators could use a tool such as Flipgrid or Zoom to allow students to participate in literature circles or book clubs in an asynchronous (Flipgrid) or synchronous (Zoom) format. Victor Anderson, a sixth grade English language arts teacher, continued with his scheduled book clubs in the midst of the global pandemic. Students had previously selected books and formed clubs prior to the ‘stay at home’order being issued. Although Victor’s students had their books, if students had been sent home without grabbing their copies, they could have utilized the local library or an app such as Overdrive in order to access digital copies of their selected novels. For the first round of meetings, Victor set up times for each group to meet on Zoom. He sent each group a link to meetings staggered throughout the day. The group reading Refugee by Alan Gratz met at 9:00, Dear Martin by Nic Stone met at 9:30, Ghost by Jason Reynolds met at 10:00, Scythe by Neal Shusterman met at 10:30, and PiecingMe Together by RenéeWatson met at 11:00. Victor chose to stagger each group so that he could have a fewminutes at the beginning of each meeting to review the purpose of their clubs and help with any logistical questions students had. After that initial meeting, all book clubs met from 10:00-10:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Victor used the breakout room feature in Zoom to put students in different digital spaces that he was able to move in and out of with ease. Students are able to request that Victor join them by selecting the“ask for help”button. At the end of the book club time, Victor can close the breakout rooms and request that students join him back in the main Zoom room. Shared Reading With shared reading, the teacher models think alouds as she reads a projected text, or selection of text, as students follow along (Tompkins, 2010). Students must be able to see the text themselves; they can have their own copies or can follow along as the teacher reads from a big book or the text that has been projected on the white board. The selected text is typically at the higher end of the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978) for most of the students in the group (Dougherty Stahl, 2012). Shared reading can help build students’ skills in the areas of print concepts, phonemic awareness, high frequency vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, critical literacy, and conceptual vocabulary (Dougherty Stahl, 2012). When preparing for a digitized version of shared reading, the teacher will first select the text. Then, a platform is chosen and the recordings can begin. This past spring, Keisha Henkes was in the middle of her poetry unit when schools pivoted to remote learning. Keisha uses the Google suite of tools often and became familiar with Screencast-O-Matic from her graduate school courses so she decided to engage in a mash-up of the two. Specifically, Keisha copy and pasted the poem, “Knoxville, Tennessee’’ by Nikki Giovanni and pasted it into a Google Doc. She then started Screencast-O-Matic and selected the option that shows her screen as well as her webcam. She moved the webcam image which was of her, speaking, to the bottom right corner so that the substantive portion of the recording would

Reading Matters Technology Matters

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