Teaching your students to podcast, confer about their reading asynchronously, and analyze characters

Hello there,

How are you? I mean, really, how are you?

I am still here — preparing to return to school 100% face-to-face after Thanksgiving. Resisting the urge to panic. Counting down the minutes until we can turn the page on 2020.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about what we can do in the here + now to make this the best possible year of learning for us and for our students. Please note: best possible. Not perfect. Not our best year ever. Not our ideal. The best we can do in these conditions.

And friends, whether or not it feels like it, you are doing it. You are doing the best possible for your students.

To help you in the coming months, members of our community will find the December Issue (Issue 05!) in their inboxes on Saturday, November 28. Here’s what will be there:

A quick-start guide to podcasting with students

I wanted to podcast with kids years before I had the nerve to do it because it just seemed so big. So daunting. So technological.

But it doesn’t have to be.

I’m going to share simple, easy ways to get kids started with composing audio texts and then some ways to kick it up a notch when you’re ready.

Get ready for…

• Recording guides to hand your students

• Ideas for SO many podcasting units

• Mentor texts galore

You’ll have everything you need to feel like you can get started NOW.

Ideas for Asynchronous Reading Conferences

How do we really check in on student reading when our students aren’t with us face to face? Or when class time is severely limited? Or when COVID restrictions make it impossible to sit next to a student and share a book?

I’ll share a handful of protocols to help you dig in to student reading across the distance.

A Reading Unit Plan for Analyzing Characters 101

I’m sharing a recent unit plan — complete with digital notebook pages that students can add to their own digital notebooks or you can print as worksheets — to help students begin to analyze characters.

(Go to FILE > MAKE A COPY to create your own copy to use with your students!)

This unit could work with any fiction you teach or with independent reading. (My students are learning these strategies using a whole- class text and practicing them in independent reading.)

I can’t wait to share some new resources with you to make your teaching life a little easier! What else could you use? What more would you like to know? Leave a comment below, and share our community with your friends + colleagues!

Be well,

Rebekah