I was not hired to be a reading teacher, but rather a social studies teacher, however, my principal always says we are all teachers of reading. The problem is, I struggle to know what I'm doing because it's been a long time since I took that class on fluency and comprehension way back in undergrad. My students read, but I have them for 40 mins, roughly 2 minutes of this can be compared to wrangling cats, leaving me with 38 minutes to be a teacher of reading and social studies. We read a lot, but often times students seem disinterested in pushing themselves to read more. How can I use my time to influence their want to read and improve their reading? Enter gamification.
I first heard about gamification on a tech blog featuring Michael Matera, author of Explore Like A Pirate. While I have yet to pick up his book, it is on my list of must reads. During his blog he talked about the engagement level gamification brings and how students go above and beyond to learn more to reach these different levels (essential skills). As a gamer myself I love this idea and I see how motivated my students get when we play games.
I decided to try to do a game, or challenge, that didn't require too much in class work and see how it goes. Here is the challenge: https://sites.google.com/isd109.org/headlineschallenge/your-mission_1
The goal of this challenge is to get students reading as many articles as they can in a month. With each article is a comprehension quiz that focuses on a variety of reading skills. With PARCC approaching, these quizzes are similar in style to the quizzes they will see on PARCC. Many students need all the practice they can get so by making it a game hopefully students will challenge themselves to read more and more.
I've also decided to track our progress along the way using information from the newsela website. The information below was captured on Sunday, February 26th, one day before the competition. The total number of articles read by users, which includes the entire school of roughly 600 students, is 2,711 in 5 months.
I first heard about gamification on a tech blog featuring Michael Matera, author of Explore Like A Pirate. While I have yet to pick up his book, it is on my list of must reads. During his blog he talked about the engagement level gamification brings and how students go above and beyond to learn more to reach these different levels (essential skills). As a gamer myself I love this idea and I see how motivated my students get when we play games.
I decided to try to do a game, or challenge, that didn't require too much in class work and see how it goes. Here is the challenge: https://sites.google.com/isd109.org/headlineschallenge/your-mission_1
The goal of this challenge is to get students reading as many articles as they can in a month. With each article is a comprehension quiz that focuses on a variety of reading skills. With PARCC approaching, these quizzes are similar in style to the quizzes they will see on PARCC. Many students need all the practice they can get so by making it a game hopefully students will challenge themselves to read more and more.
I've also decided to track our progress along the way using information from the newsela website. The information below was captured on Sunday, February 26th, one day before the competition. The total number of articles read by users, which includes the entire school of roughly 600 students, is 2,711 in 5 months.
Here you see 918 quizzes have been taken since September 2016
Here you see the proficiency level of students who have used the program.
I will track this weekly.
No comments:
Post a Comment