3. Students did a focused free write in their writing journals, recording everything they knew about their topic. 4. Teacher met with each student to edit and conference about their writing. 5. Students wrote final copies on nice paper. 6. Students practiced reading aloud their writing.
eBook Creation with Chromebooks: Day 1
(40 minutes) Typing student work onto slides and illustrations
1. 3 parent helpers assisted the teacher in typing on students’ slides. Some students chose to type on their own, while other students read aloud their writing while an adult typed it. Example 2. When students weren’t working on typing their slides, they were illustrating a picture to go along with what they wrote on a half sheet of paper. 3. Students practiced reading their writing aloud again.
Behind the scenes after Day 1 (30 minutes) Scanned student artwork and inserted it onto slides. Published slideshow to the web.
1. Scanned student artwork as a JPEG into one email. 2. Moved each picture to my desktop. 3. Cropped and rotated pictures as needed.
4. Inserted each student’s picture onto his/her slide. 5. Published the slideshow to the web. Example File > Publish to the web
eBook Creation with Chromebooks: Day 2
(30 minutes) Created a screencast of the slideshow with students reading their slides 1. Start the slideshow using the publish to the web URL. 2. Click Screencastify extension. 3. Select tab to just record slideshow. 4. Select microphone. 5. Students stand in a line quietly and take turns coming up to my teacher laptop to read their slides. 6. When finished recording, upload the Screencastify video to YouTube. Make sure the video is set to ‘public.’ Example
Sharing
1. Send the YouTube link and ‘publish to the web’ URL of the slideshow to parents in an email. 2. Post the links to your teacher website or embed the YouTube video and slideshow on your website.
Conclusion: From my experience, students exhibit a great deal of excitement, pride, and ownership in their eBooks. Parents delight in hearing their children read, and along with being absolutely adorable, eBooks hold high educational merit in today’s classrooms.