Hey friends! I’m back with more tips for your literacy centers! Please don’t roll your eyes, but I’m going to talk about digital resources for students! (Groan, right?) A year ago, digital student resources were in high demand. You wanted them. But by now, you’re probably pretty sick of anything that has to do with the words digital!
Hopefully, you’re able to go back into your classroom and offer books to your students. REAL books. And real notebooks, worksheets, and papers. Whether you’re still needing to keep shared materials to a minimum, or you want to use both printable worksheets and digital student resources, this post on blending traditional activities with digital resources for students will help you out.
Printable Worksheets And Digital Resources For Students
Digital student resources are here to stay. Like them or leave them. But I want to show you how to blend your digital educational resources with printable worksheets and books. I’ve done this for years. My students LOVE it, and I find it reaches them on so many levels.
I like my kiddos to have a book in one hand and a device in the other. So let me show you how to make digital resources for students work for you!
Reader’s Response
Do you have a classroom library? What if you have your children reading books and responding through their devices?
I love the platform, Seesaw for this, it’s so versatile. Your kiddos can take a picture of their book, then record either their thoughts on the books or respond to a reading strategy prompt like:
- “What was the main idea?”
- “How did the character change at the end of the story?”
- “Why should your friends read this book?”
I always called these “Book Shelfies” and my students LOVED doing them.
Do you use the Epic reading app? I found a lot of really fantastic books for my students to read. And to make it fun, instead of a worksheet, I gave my students sticky notes with their reading strategies printed right on top! You can get a free copy of the sticky notes for reader’s response here.
If you’d like to know how I taught my students to use the Seesaw tools for activities such as this, read this article about the FREE Seesaw Scavenger Hunt that I take my students on each year. It will make learning the Seesaw tools a breeze for you and your students! It’s important that they know what the tools do, but it’s more important that you show them HOW to use them.
Spelling Practice
I like to add spelling practice to my digital resources for students. There are a ton of online spelling games that your students can play.
But I don’t want my spelling activities to be totally digital. One of my favorite (and SO easy) activities for my students is writing out their spelling words for the week, and then taking their list and spelling the words on an app called Magnetic ABC. My students loved the different colors and styles of letters, and I loved how easy this activity was to assign!
Digital Resources For Your Students At Listening Centers
I’ve talked before about how I changed my listening center activities to digital when one of my students accidentally broke my CD player. (Poor girl was horrified!)
I searched YouTube for some great online stories for kids to use instead, replacing the big clunky CD/tape combo player I never liked anyway! But over the years, I collected a bunch of books for my listening center. I still wanted to use them, so I took my books, found Youtube videos for the titles, and I was back in the races!
So when you’re looking to blend your digital resources for students with traditional activities, think about it like this. You’d like your students to receive information and then respond to it. Choose which of those two you’d like digital, and which you’d like “traditional”. They could read a book, then respond on their devices, or they could read something online, and respond in a notebook.
Adding traditional activities will make sure that you’re keeping those digital student resources engaging and fun!
Year Long Passages for Close Reading
Save time and money by purchasing this bundle of YEAR-LONG PASSAGES FOR CLOSE READING! These fun and engaging passages and activities have everything your students need to practice independent reading and comprehension. You can prep all of your reading lessons or centers for the whole year now and save time and money!
Is it a struggle to teach your students the Seesaw tools? I’ve created a FREE game for your students that will help them learn to use the Seesaw tools responsibly!
Seesaw Scavenger Hunt
Check out my Summer Series
To get you ready for Back To School 2021, I've organized all the best literacy station ideas for you! This past year was rough so let Teaching Firsties do the work for you this summer so you'll be confident and ready to begin school in the fall.
