Using Digital Tools to Enhance Literacy Practices: A Case Study of a Second Grade Homeschooler in Alaska

Introduction

As an experienced online teacher of writing to teenagers and adults, I never imagined the possibility of online schooling for young children before the Spring of 2020. And yet, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, my son, who was 7 years old at the time, participated in online education in Alaska (see Figure 1) via our neighborhood public school for the last quarter of first grade (March 2020) and all of second grade (2020-2021).

Figure 1.

Jack participating in a Zoom class from an ocean-side picnic table

Prior to Spring 2020, fewer than 10% of Alaskan families educated their children at home rather than sending them to a school. From 2020-2021, Alaska experienced the largest (17.9%) increase in homeschooling of any state in the nation and 27.5% chose homeschooling (Eggleston & Fields, 2020). In addition to homeschooling options, some neighborhood schools also offered temporary online options, so when our neighborhood public school offered face-to-face and online options, I chose online learning because Jack had done well during the initial pivot to virtual schooling in first grade. Since our community was leading the nation in COVID-19 pandemic spread, there was a good chance all learning would pivot back online, and I wanted him to engage in a consistent mode of learning.

Literacy practices are shaped by the communities around us (e.g., Graham, 2018), so when schooling shifted online, the way children engaged in literacy practices changed, too. While Jack already had experience using FaceTime and texting with family members and friends, before Spring 2020 he had never joined a Zoom meeting or communicated with his teacher or classmates in an online environment. In first grade, Jack and his classmates had now learned how to login to their virtual classroom, locate their work plans, and enter Zoom meetings. While some students needed adult support to participate in virtual meetings at home, others navigated the online environment independently.

Jack composed his first book report of second grade using paper and pencil as he had in first grade, but handwriting slowed his train of thought down, prevented him from easily making revisions, and the products were sometimes difficult for his reader to decipher. For his second book report, he asked to use the digital tools he saw his teachers and I using in our own professional communications. Jack, his teacher, and I discussed the benefits of different modality several times throughout the semester during our weekly meetings. While his teacher and I were skeptical of Jack’s ability to use digital tools independently and in meaningful ways in second grade, we recognized that digital composing is part of the Alaska Grade 3 Writing Standards (see Figure 4) and that he was capable of producing ideas on a computer. We allowed him to practice making s to compose using Google Slides through his school district assigned email address. This later extended to Google Slides, images, videos, and voice threads. As I show in this chapter, these products conveyed deeper understanding of the texts and connected with readers in more sophisticated and meaningful ways than the book reports he wrote using paper and pencil.