The panel includes Tanya Plibersek, Shadow Minister for Education; Adrian Piccoli, Director of Gonski Institute, UNSW and former NSW Education Minister; Eddie Woo, High School Maths Teacher and Internet Sensation; John Collier, Principal, St Andrew’s Cathedral School; and Vy Tran, Year 12 student from Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School.

Below is a description of the offer from Vocabulary Spelling City.

If you already have an account you can apply this code when adding more licenses to your account.

This year I decided to start an online reading diary, which has transformed the way my students engage with their home reading and the recording of it.

The following is a guide as to how I went about setting up an online reading diary using Microsoft Teams and the benefits I have noticed with my students.

Step 1: Create an Online Reading Diary Team

Create a separate “Class” team for your reading diary. This is important as it makes managing the reading diary more manageable and removes other distractions from the sole activity of supporting your student’s reading. Once you have created your team I would then choose a team avatar that readily identifies your reading diary. The standard book icon pictured to your left is a good choice, but you can also upload your self created one if you like.

Step 2: Add members to your team

Next, you need to add your students and any teacher colleagues that may work cooperatively with you.

Step 3: Create private channels for your students

Create a private channel for each of your students using their name as the title for the private channel. This channel will be used by your students and yourself to correspond privately with your student about their reading and their reading progress. This is important as it gives the students the confidence to record their reading, set reading goals and receive feedback about their reading without their peers knowing. Don’t forget to add the student concerned and any teacher colleagues that should have access to this private channel.

This channel is where I ask my students to record their reading each night by stating the title of the book, how many pages they have read and the duration of time. I usually respond to the student’s recordings with a thumbs-up emoji or a smiley face and occasionally I will write words of encouragement or offer advice on their next choice of book. I also occasionally offer encouragement with a giphy as well.

I also use the announcement feature to give feedback on their Lexile or other reading tool results. I also post certificates earned through various reading tools in this channel, but I also celebrate these achievements by posting them in the general channel that is viewable by all. This allows their peers to give positive feedback and also motivates them to achieve their goals to receive a similar acknowledgement.

Step 4: Adding a tab within your student’s private channel for the Premier’s Reading Challenge

The Premier’s Reading Challenge is a State-run initiative to encourage students to read quality literature. Depending on your state and how the Premier’s Reading Challenge is run, you may want to add a tab within your student’s private channel or in the general channel if it is a general website link that your students need to log into to record their reading (I will be going through how to do this further in this post). In South Australia students only have the option of filling in a word document. Usually, teachers give a hard copy of this form for students to fill in with their parents, but over the length of time that the challenge goes for a lot of them go missing. Recording the Premier’s Reading Challenge online via Microsoft Teams alleviates this problem.

To create this I, first of all, created a copy of the word document and renamed the file to include the student’s name, so it was identifiable to them. I then uploaded the file in the student’s “Files” tab.

You then need to click on the + symbol at the end of your tabs to add a tab. Once you do that you are presented with the options pictured above. Choose the Word icon and then select the file you uploaded previously. Make sure you name the tab an appropriate name that is relevant to your students.

As pictured above I called the tab “PRC 2020” and when a student clicks on it they will have access to the word document and they can fill it in and it is saved automatically within Microsoft Teams. At the end of the challenge, my students will be able to email or share their Premier’s Reading Challenge forms with our coordinator.

Step 5: Adding any online reading tools to the general channel tabs.

In the general channels tabs, I have added access to websites that the students use for their reading. To do this you need to follow the same process that I outlined with adding a Word document, but instead of clicking on the “Word” icon, you need to click on the website icon. You can add as many as you like, but I have included access to Literacy Pro (Lexile), Wushka, Epic and Read Theory. This means that students can access these resources, but remain in the Microsoft Teams environment.

An additional tab that I will be adding in the future is a Flipgrid tab to allow students to do a video review of the books they read.

Overall benefits

I have seen an increased level of engagement with our home reading program and students accessing our reading tools more often. They enjoy getting the instant feedback via an emoji, comment or giphy. It has also given rise to students asking me questions about their reading and being able to assist with their reading choice. Students encouraging each other when certificates are celebrated is another positive outcome. Overall I have seen a faster improvement in my student’s reading comprehension results since using Microsoft Teams as our online reading diary.

If you have any questions about using Microsoft Teams as your classroom reading diary then please leave your questions in the comments section below.

Signing up and creating your student accounts.

Signing up is easy and you can either use your Google account or sign up using your email address.

It is very easy to create your student accounts and it is not necessary to add a student email, which saves a lot of time. You only need a student email if you want students resetting their passwords if they forget them. Once you have created your student accounts you will receive an email with your student account details.

Student pre-test.

Students will be required to sit a pre-test which will involve answering 8 questions on a series of texts that should last about 20 minutes. This will establish your students Lexile level and approximate grade level for their reading comprehension.

Once the student has completed the test, appropriate texts are then selected for the student based on their level.

General use by students.

Students get instant feedback as they go about answering reading comprehension questions on the texts that are presented. Teachers can choose if they would like students to have written responses, but this requires teachers to moderate the answers, whereas all multiple-choice questions are marked by the system.

Students are awarded knowledge points for every correct answer.

Analysis of student reading.

If teachers choose to, they can allow their students to see their reading Lexile level and Grade level. The following image shows the data that students can view. Teachers also have access to this information with a general overview of their classes progress.

As students progress with their Lexile level they can earn achievements such as Luminary which is the first level pictured above.

Classroom Use

I have chosen to use this tool as a part of my students morning silent reading routine at least twice a week in combination with other reading tools and materials. My students enjoy using it and appreciate the instant feedback and the challenge of improving their results and making progress with their reading comprehension.

Tony Jones is joined by a panel of education experts and advocates to discuss the state of our schools in Australia. Includes Eddie Woo, Pasi Sahlberg, Cindy Berwick, Gabbie Stroud and Jennifer Buckingham.

Q&A ABC

Megan Morrone talks with Apple education expert Bradley Chambers. Bradley writes a weekly column on 9to5Mac called Making the Grade, with app pics, advice, and guidance. They discuss Bradley’s articles and his favorite apps for education, including Kinderlime, Endless Reader, Endless Numbers, Endless Spanish, SpellingCity, Leaf Snap, TapTyping, and more.

Twit.tv

Below is a video of the thinking behind this Google experiment.

Florence looked on YouTube to find an Australian Primary Teacher that she could follow and seek advice from, but couldn’t find anyone. Florence then took the brave step of doing it herself.

Florence’s videos are easy to view and she articulates her thoughts and ideas honestly and clearly. She currently has over 80 videos and they cover many topics from work-life balance, organising class assessment data, preparing for teacher interviews to what Florence did when her USB broke.

Teacher Tales is a great resource for beginning teachers, pre-service teachers and even for the more experienced teacher. I’ve learned a lot and discovered new ideas from Florence and I’m sure you will too. Below is an introductory video from Florence and a link to her YouTube channel and her various social media sites.

The following are some of the features of Wushka….

Narration

The narration feature within Wushka is a real benefit to those students that struggle with reading comprehension or reading fluency. It gives them the independence to use this tool when necessary and not give up, because an adult was not available to assist them at the time.

Reading Boxes and Groups

You can assign a coloured reading box to any student and in the teacher’s settings you have the ability to chose what level of access you would like to give to that particular student  (as outlined below). There are charts available that show a comparison between different reading programs so that you can assign your student the correct level based on a program you might already be using.

Teachers can also set up reading groups, where you can assign specific texts or groups of texts for each group (as pictured above). This has been a great feature to assist with setting up shared reading groups within the class setting.

Quiz

At the end of each reader, the student can take a quiz on the text to check the student’s reading comprehension. This also assists the student depending on the results as to whether or not they need to re-read the text.

Support materials

Each reader includes supporting material such as printable lesson plans, literacy activities, blackline masters and assessment tools.

Class Statistics and Student Statistics

Having data on your student’s reading is a great way to check engagement and how well your students are comprehending the texts that they are reading. The class statistics gives you a quick overview of your class as to how many readers they have completed, the average time they have spent per reader in minutes, the average amount of readers they are reading each week and the percentage of quiz questions they are getting correct.

Student statistics gives you individualised data on how regular the student is reading, what percentage of books they are re-reading, what percentage of their reading selection they have remaining, the percentage of books they are reading that is fiction or non-fiction and how regularly they are using the narration feature. You can also view the student’s quiz results and specifically what time of day and on what day they were reading.

I have found Wushka to be a great program that engages well with reluctant readers. I have seen great progress with those students and from students with an ESL background. Students are more prolific with their reading using Wushka and it is a great complimentary program to use in conjunction with existing levelled reading programs that may already exist in schools such as Lexile reading or other levelled reading programs.

Wushka can be trialled for free, but if you decide to go ahead with it, it is currently $10 per student per year.

The Whiteboard is very clean and simple to use. As pictured below you have access to a variety of pens, highlighter, eraser, ruler, marquee select tool, undo and redo buttons.

You can ink to shape and ink to table, which is a great feature. You can also export your whiteboards as a png image. All work on the whiteboards are saved to the cloud in real time. When working collaboratively you can see the changes being made by other people in real time.

You can add sticky notes and import images into your whiteboards. You can have as many whiteboards as you need, so you can work on multiple projects at the same time.

I can see this being used by students to collaborate on ideas in groups or students feeding back to a teacher whiteboard to share ideas.