Abstract
In the past year, one instructional practice that has gained traction is the use of online children's picture books or digital texts. Teachers use these (often free) online resources in various ways during literacy instruction. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how preservice teachers and inservice teachers can plan for the effective use of digital texts in their literacy instruction. This chapter provides a conceptual framework for teachers to apply when using digital texts as read alouds in their classrooms. Further, this chapter describes how teachers can actively engage their students when using this text type with their students. Often, a main concern of teachers when using digital texts is how to actively engage students with this text type. Teachers want to plan meaningful literacy instruction that includes digital texts, which means they want their students to engage with the texts they are reading. This chapter demonstrates how using a conceptual framework while planning for early literacy instruction can guide student engagement while using digital texts.
TopIntroduction
The landscape of education continues to evolve and that was never more obvious than during the two previous school years impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the overnight transition to online teaching, teachers quickly implemented a variety of technology tools they may not have purposefully vetted. Now that teachers have had more than a year to incorporate these various technology tools into their instructional practices, they will be more willing to continue using these during fully online, hybrid, or in-school instruction.
As teacher educators, we have all worked with graduate and undergraduate students at our universities in elementary literacy education. In this work, we noticed the need for teachers to use different technology tools and understand how and why they are using said tools to engage the students they teach. Through this lens, we began thinking about how to be more strategic in our instruction when we present these online tools in our literacy courses by providing more modeling and support to effectively engage our students with these technology tools in a meaningful way.
One area that has gained traction is the use of online children’s picture books or digital texts. We have seen teachers use these (often free) online resources in various ways during literacy instruction. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how preservice teachers (PST) and inservice teachers (IST) can plan for the effective use of digital texts in their literacy instruction. This chapter provides a conceptual framework for teachers to apply when using digital texts as read alouds in their classrooms. Further, we suggest how teachers can actively engage their students when using this text type with their students. A main concern of teachers when using digital texts is how to actively engage students with this text type. Teachers want to plan meaningful literacy instruction that includes digital texts, which means they want their students to engage with the texts they are reading. This chapter demonstrates how using a conceptual framework while planning for early literacy instruction can guide student engagement while using digital texts.
Key Terms in this Chapter
A3 Model: A conceptual model that focuses on active learning through the alignment of the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al., 2000) and the characteristics of effective professional development (Desimone, 2009).
Student Engagement: The level of attention, interest, or passion a student demonstrates when they are learning.
Community Of Inquiry: A group of individuals that purposefully engage in critical discourse and reflection to confirm mutual meanings and construct personal understandings.
Teaching Presence: The behavior of the instructor through meaningful and frequency interactions.
Cognitive Presence: How content is presented to support the participants achieving the desired learning outcomes.
Social Presence: The collaborative relationships developed among the class or group participants.
Digital Text: An electronic text that often embeds features such as hyperlinks, images, videos, and is most frequently delivered virtually.
Interactive Read Alouds: Literacy instruction where readers engaging in conversations, ask questions, and respond in a multitude of ways to a text.