Blend Learning with TeachingBooks Resources
Enrich classroom engagement by infusing digital resources and student choice into lessons. A blended learning, technology-rich environment offers increased flexibility with differentiated instruction and virtual teaching. Use the resources on TeachingBooks to increase opportunities for student choice, support teacher-led instruction, and facilitate the integration of each into a blended learning, technology-rich environment. Explore the examples and ideas for Blended Learning: across curricular areas and within a focused unit below!
Blend Learning Across Curricular Areas
Teacher-led Instruction
Guide instruction for cross-curricular study…
- Start a biography writing unit with this Meet-the-Author Recording for Diary of a Worm.
- Listen as a class or post to your learning management system such as Google Classroom.
- Have students choose an animal or insect to learn about and write their own diary for.
- Offer ideas from the featured resource, “Doreen Cronin as Our Mentor,” in this book guide.
- Use this lesson plan to help students differentiate narrative and informational elements of a text.
- Share this Meet-the-Author Recording for Sea Bear: A Journey for Survival to inspire their research.
- Then, have them illustrate their diaries with both narrative and informational elements featured.
- Have students prepare with a compare and contrast of journaling styles.
Offer Student Choice
Simultaneous to teacher-led instruction, students can engage with these supplemental activities at a pace of their choosing…
- At the beginning of the unit, share a Custom Reading List of Biographies with Meet-the-Author Recordings that students can listen to at their own pace.
- For each recording, ask students to share one thing they learned either in writing or illustration.
- At the end of the unit, students can post their favorite facts to a shared “biography” board.
- Also create a list of all Science books that have a Meet-the-Author Recording.
- Have students listen and record facts that they learned from each.
- At the end of the unit, all students can add their favorite facts to a shared “science” board.
Blend Learning Within a Focused Unit
Teacher-Led Instruction
Guide instruction on a particular unit…
- Start a unit on literary forms by sharing a collection of titles for a genre of your choice.
- Create a list of titles or share an existing list such as Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2005-2019.
- Have students use these lists to choose a book for independent reading.
- Introduce a variety of literary forms by exploring graphic novels, poetry, book trailers, and reader’s theater scripts.
- Have students adapt their independent reading book into new literary forms like graphic novel, poetry, etc. Consider this example…
- The Odyssey (Graphic Novel) by Gareth Hinds
- Adapted from The Odyssey (original text) by Homer
Offer Student Choice
Simultaneous to teacher-led instruction, students can engage with these supplemental activities at a pace of their choosing…
Adapt a significant moment from your independent reading book…
- Read this guest blog post on graphic novel adaptations and the video book readings for Nimona then create a 1-2 page adaptation of your own.
- Watch this reader’s theater performance and write a section of your book as a scene from a play.
- Listen to this Meet-the-Author Recording with Lita Judge on choosing poetry for the voice of Mary Shelley. Write a scene from your book as a poem.
- Watch these book trailers for The Girl Who Drank the Moon and Children of Blood and Bone, then create your own.
- Listen to this Meet-the-Author Recording for Saints and Misfits and write 2-3 journal entries in the voice of a character from your book.
What’s working for you?
How are you using TeachingBooks to create a blended learning, technology-rich environment? Leave your ideas in a comment below!
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