Improving reading comprehension and fluency skills. Megan Urlichs - Manor Lakes College Founder – Wyndham Teach, Connect, Learn megan.urlichs@manorlakesp12.vic.edu.au Thanks for having me today. I hope you all get something out of todays presentation that you can take back to classroom and use next week. My name is Megan I currently teach grade 5 at Manor Lakes College out Werribee way. I have been at the college since 2010 which was our second year. We are a p12 college with 2 learning houses for students with additional learning needs we currently have an enrolment of 1800+ with predicted enrolments upwards of 3000 before new schools are built. I am also the founder of Wyndham Teach, Connect, Learn a professional learning network for teachers in the City of Wyndham and the surrounding suburbs to share and learn from each other. I run school holiday workshops for teachers and a holiday program for Girls in STEM.

Presentation Goals To explore a range of reading websites that have been proven to improve reading comprehension skills across the curriculum. To explore Flipgrid as a tool to provide teacher and peer feedback to improve reading fluency. The goals for todays presentation is to show teachers how they can use websites and apps in conjunction with traditional reading methods. The websites discussed today can be used as a reading session warmups, reading groups activity, link with science and humanities studies, improving general knowledge, independent and shared reading. We will also explore flipgrid and how it can be used to assess fluency and students can self assess and get feedback about their reading.

Programs we will explore today Digital Readworks Study Ladder Kids News BTN – Behind the news Google Classroom Links to traditional methods Flipgrid Question at end of list to see if any one has used or is familiar with any of the programs.

Digital Readworks ReadWorks Digital Lexile levels Easy to Differentiate for reading groups or individually Strategy and Topic choices Easy record keeping Only setback is stories contain American Content Digital readworks is free and set up in lexile levels and F&P. you can assign a text to the whole class or differentiate for reading groups. You can choose topics that link t what you are studying at the moment or front load information (we do humanities for ½ term and science for the other ½) so we are doing science in the second half of this term so I will put in Space related texts to front load information and build knowledge before we start the topic. Lets have a look at the site and how it works. Click link and discuss

Study Ladder Australian Curriculum Linked K- 6 Set tasks for whole class or to differentiate for groups and individually Assessment and progress reports Discuss the site – Australian and linked to the curriculum. It has maths, reading, science and more and can be set up for independent activities and reading group activities. I also use as an early finisher activity. Explore the site.

Kids News Herald Sun written in student friendly language. Levelled by complexity of language or content Range of comprehension tasks not just question and answer Archived articles with set of comprehension questions and writing tasks Email daily to teacher with upcoming stories and linked information Free for the remainder of this year and then $2 per student in 2018 Discuss and then explore

BTN – http://www.abc.net.au/btn/ Student focused Weekly stories Current affairs and student voice stories Questions prepared and link to each story with ability to extend/go further Links to other schools and competitions Visual text, Whole class discussions or individually on iPads, Note taking (AVID strategies) Summarise, Questions Connections with country school, fireworks competition

Google Classroom Traditional Pen and Paper comprehension activities made digital to complete in Google classroom Stored in one place for easy feedback and assessment Although it is still just a worksheet on a computer it saves paper, is easy to set up and be organised weeks ahead of time. Warm ups and activities for regular feedback and assessment

Reading Groups - Linking the traditional and the digital Guided reading - Students are also recorded to provide student/teacher feedback Shared Reading - Listening to each other read and questioning about reading, feedback for improvement Independent reading - 20 minutes daily with 5 students reading aloud to the teacher Digital websites as a reading group activity - individual or in pairs and read aloud together. Websites have text to talk capabilities. Daily teacher Modeling - Class read aloud

Flipgrid - Feedback and Fluency Assessment https://admin.flipgrid.com/manage/dashboard Read F & P levelled text aloud and recorded for fluency Book Reviews Text summaries Maths Exit Tickets Research Presentations Global Connections Flipgrid – I am a certified educator and ambassador. GO into program to discuss

Contact Details Megan Urlichs - Grade 5 Teacher, Manor Lakes College, Victoria Facebook - Wyndham Teach, Connect, Learn @wynteachconnectlearn Twitter - @wyndhamTCL @megan_urlichs Email - megan.urlichs@manorlakesp12.vic.edu.au