ThingLink for a Reading Unit Reflection

You know that week you get back from a holiday, whether you've planned that week or not, it's all a bit of a daze? Well, this is when ThingLink came to my rescue! We had just finished our reading unit on being 'Reading Teachers' and I was looking for some way for the kids to reflect on the different strategies they had learned in this unit. So I had them work with their reading buddies. Together they took a picture of themselves and linked 3-4 videos clips each saying different things that reading teachers do. It was a nice way to get the kids to collaborate together using technology. I was impressed with how they helped each other brainstorm the different things reading teachers do and how they instructed each other to use a louder voice or to wait for their signal before beginning to talk. Naturally, I also got a few video clips that were not quite on point, but that also gave me information as a teacher and now I know who I should be conferring with next! These pieces aren't the best possible work the kids can produce, but I think they turned out pretty good for a first try at a new app for a bunch of 5 year olds. They all worked pretty independently too. Now that they have the hang of it, next time I hope to have them demonstrate with  books, the different stragegies in action. I may also have them get creative with the still photo they use as the background for their ThingLink!

Here are some examples of the ThingLinks they created.

Just in case you can't understand some of what they're referring to:

• "Thinking marks" are Post it notes to mark different parts of a book like questions, favorite parts etc.

• "Super powers" we had a unit before this on reading super powers and their super powers were reading stragegies that help them figure out tricky words.