Reaching Struggling Primary Readers with Digital & Multimodal Text

Personal Digital Inquiry allows students and teachers to be involved in collaboration to discuss, analyze, and reflect so that knowledge is gained and is evident in student creations (Coiro et al., 2019). As an experienced primary teacher, I believe Personal Digital Inquiry (PDI) is best approached as first a guided inquiry so that learners become familiar with the process. One of the authors of From Curiosity to Deep Learning Personal Digital Inquiry in Grades K-5 share the initial joy of her first graders as she explained late in the year that they would use what they learned from prior inquiry projects to pick their own topic and engage in an inquiry of personal interest. She described the students’ excitement by reflecting on nods, big smiles, and quiet cheers (Coiro et al., 2019). As I imagine the scene in that first-grade classroom, I can almost hear the buzz of voices as they begin to discuss and share their topic ideas with one another. Students are naturally curious about ma...

    Children have playfully experienced digital text before entering their first classroom, therefore teachers should use this engagement to develop rich activities into early childhood settings (Oakley et al., 2018). I believe one reason why we as educators choose to do what we do is we want to support the development of a natural love for learning and doing this requires us to meet students where they are in the academic needs, but also by using student interests to nurture that love.. Students enjoy computers and hands-on learning, and the freedom to explore many resources available (Moss & Lapp, 2010). We must also consider the behaviors of early readers and the features of digital text that may or may not support early reading (Bates et al., 2016). For example in my classroom, I have taught my students to use pencil erasers of a craft stick to track print on an iPad because often touching the screen creates a shift in print or could open a link, etc.. Often the use of...

  Technology has developed over the years and its affordances allow for information to be easily accessed by almost anyone. Today our students use the many resources offered through technology in a variety of ways. The skills acquired during school will most likely follow them into their chosen careers as well as be used for social aspects of their lives. Students must be able to effectively evaluate resources in order to synthesize information and to think critically about what they read and hear to identify reliable resources for the information to seek answers to their questions (Dobler et al., 2015). As a primary teacher, I want to provide my students with resources that help my students to meet the academic goals of each project and set the foundational blocks for identifying reliable and useful resources as they learn to navigate the digital world. Like anything else we do in our classrooms planning is essential for the use of technology. We must first consider what d...

      I created a plan of implementation to support literacy learning using digital and multimodal text to use with below-level readers in my second-grade classroom. The beginning of the year DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) expectation for second grade is 18-20 these students demonstrated a DRA level of 12-14. These multimodal and digital texts will create a path of literacy learning in which students are not decoding and practicing fluency, therefore, allowing more energy to focus on comprehension skills (Johnson, 2014) . I made decisions for this plan based on the Oklahoma State ELA Standards, student needs,  and using my district Wonder’s curriculum tools while also incorporating ideas around the use of digital and multimodal text learned from my current master’s class, textbooks, and articles I have read. My goal is for second graders to be excited by engaging activities in which they are able to use online resources with guidance to make meaning of multim...