For the second year in a row, I've collaborated with a 3rd grade teacher, Anne McEldowney, to bring a little fun to her reading class. Last year, it was an Olympic themed reading game where students earned badges upon completion of various reading activities. Her goal was focused on their written responses. Her students would happily read, as long as she'd let them. However, the responses about their reading were coming up short. We focused on improving this skill through a variety of activities - some Anne already had in place; others were brand new - and the students earned badges. Ultimately, these badges earned them bronze, silver, and gold medals.
We had a few conversations, threw some ideas around, back-and-forth, up-and-down, and from this was born "Mrs. McEldowney's Reading Around the World"! The ultimate goal is to read around the world in 9 weeks.
To do this, we are bringing together several pieces, and housing it in a Google site. The basic idea is a time goal for each continent, starting in Antarctica and ending in North America. To track their progress, a Flippity.net Progress Tracker was created for each continent with a custom goal. Various reading activities have also been added for each continent and a passport is used to record the students' responses.
The home page of the site has an embedded Google Map of the world. Each student added a pin to represent themself and then customized their "pin" by choosing their color and an icon of their choice. This allows them to see themself along their reading journey. As they progress, Mrs. Mac will move them from continent to continent. [I added a pin to each continent so they knew the order of their journey from one continent to the next.] It is very exciting to watch as the students move from one continent to the next!
Each continent has its own page, displaying the Flippity.net Progress Tracker for that continent. Each day, Mrs. McEldowney checks the students' reading logs and credits them with their time. The Progress Tracker is a Google Sheet, published to the web, that is coded to show a progress bar for the corresponding continent. The best part of this tracker is Flippity has this all set up with a template you can, too, can grab and use!
Once a student reaches the goal for that particular continent, their pin is moved and tomorrow's reading time is credited to the next "stop".
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| the "homepage" |
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| The 1st Continent on the Journey |
Each continent has its own page, displaying the Flippity.net Progress Tracker for that continent. Each day, Mrs. McEldowney checks the students' reading logs and credits them with their time. The Progress Tracker is a Google Sheet, published to the web, that is coded to show a progress bar for the corresponding continent. The best part of this tracker is Flippity has this all set up with a template you can, too, can grab and use!
Once a student reaches the goal for that particular continent, their pin is moved and tomorrow's reading time is credited to the next "stop".
