For some time I've wanted to try this with my first graders, but I was also a little hesitant to take the plunge. Then I read Karen Lirenman's post about using Today's Meet with her first graders. In her post, Back Channeling in the Primary Grades, she stepped through the way she supported the young learners in her classroom in learning to share their thinking digitally with others.
Reading her post gave me the confidence to give this a try. I decided, since it was nearing the end of the year, I would dive right into back channeling with first graders. I went to Today's Meet to set up a room. I decided to keep the room for a period of time so we could continue to use it together. Our first attempt was during our afternoon read aloud. Students quickly learned to share their surprises, their questions, their new understandings as we read. They reported it was easy to listen and type at the same time, though they appreciated my pauses when I noticed many were trying to type.
We've continued to use our virtual space to share thinking during reader's workshop and across our day. Next I want to give it a try in a science observation and a math problem solving situation. I keep two of our computers open to Today's Meet during the day for students to wander over to add their thinking. I then use some of their comments in our class Twitter account. I think Today's Meet is helping them understand ways to share, comment, and collaborate with others in a virtual space. So it seems Karen was right, first graders can back channel. Thanks for the push!
There you go leading the way! :) I've been thinking about how to create a collaborative way for my students to share their thinking during read aloud. Still at this point in the year, I have some kids who are not really doing the kind of work I want them to do in their reader's notebooks while I read. I hoped that using some kind of collaborative tool would help these kiddos stretch a bit. Now, I know what I'm going to try...tomorrow. We have Chromebooks, so I'm going to jump in. Thanks Cathy!!
ReplyDeleteI will go check it out right now, Cathy! I'm interested in sharing this with others at school. Wonder if they'd like to do it with reading responses of current books too? Thanks a lot for sharing about this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking up this week with such a great post about back channeling, a new term for me. I could just sit in my chair and surf through post after post and learn as much or more than any PD.
ReplyDeleteFascinating.
ReplyDeleteTrying to figure out how I would do this as I like to project our read aloud via the Kindle app. Maybe with my Friday "Random Read Aloud," which is usually a picture book...hmm....