Everything Old is New Again: Reading

Before our school year began, I thought about the unbelievable amount of time our students would spend in front of a screen. A few of my friends and colleagues talked about this, and we came up with a plan. This plan sounded much easier than it actually was. Our school put together paper shopping bags for all of our students. In these bags, among other materials and supplies, were actual hard copies of books we would read during our first semester.

When the time came for us to embark upon our first whole-class novel, each of my students had a hard copy of that book. Again, even though my delivery is totally on Zoom, my students did not need to focus on the screen for the entire class period. In fact, a good amount of their time was spent looking at a paper page or writing notes in a paper notebook.

I asked the students to keep their video on, but instructed them to adjust the camera so that I could see their book or notebook on my screen. And I did. I could see their drawings of characters or situations in their notebooks. I was able to see if they were, in fact, writing definitions for vocabulary words. Most importantly, while I was reading aloud, I could see at a glance if they were following along with me, turning pages as we read together. It was very much like a live classroom, but on Zoom.