Common Core Alignment:
(Literature and Informational Text)
I love trying new things with technology and one of my goals has been to figure out how my little 1st grade friends can actually create something on their MacBooks rather than just doing something I’ve created for them. So, this week, we tried something new with our reading response strategy focus of questioning. When I introduced the questioning strategy to my friends last week, it was a bit of a struggle for them to form questions before/during/after reading- they really just wanted to tell me what they were thinking in the form of a sentence! We tried again this week with the creation of a Prezi, which is an online presentation that you can create to get all your ideas organized in one spot and then share with others. I did this with my small group of 1st graders and they each got an opportunity to share an idea and/or write their question on our Prezi. Prezi is free- all you need to do is create an account. I find it to be very user friendly and fun to use! While one student was typing a question on the Prezi, the others were using Screenchomp on their iPads to show a response to one of our questions. (I know I’ve written about this app recently– but it has saved our classroom lots of paper and been a super engaging reading response activity for my friends!) I have to say I will definitely be using Prezi again to have my students create something new as a reading response activity!
I created the Prezi first by choosing a pre-made template that worked perfectly for this reading response activity because it shows a person with thought bubbles! I then pulled in a picture of our Questioning strategy poster that we refer to in class and made a title page. 
I showed the students the book we were using and asked them if they had any questions about the story before we read it. The students then typed in their questions. I followed this same format for during and after reading questions as well. It was a great way to stop & think about our story!
The other students were busy filling out their graphic organizer with an answer to the questions we came up with on their iPads. They took a picture of the graphic organizer and then drew their response with the virtual markers.
