Digital Literacy Resources

            It is no surprise that we are living in a digital age, and it is important to expose students to printed and digital texts. The literacy world is ever growing with digital resources for readers, and the following are three websites that every reading teacher should keep in his/her reading toolbox.

International Children’s Digital Library

This website is an online library for children all over the world. The mission of this site is to promote diversity and acceptance by providing some of the best children’s literature in the world. Immediately upon connecting to the site, you can click on one of several links to browse the texts available. It is user friendly in that you can peruse titles by language, format, genre, characters, and more. Thousands of books are available to be read directly from the website, and that is highly appealing to students, and this is my favorite feature of the site. I can see this as a beneficial resource to connect to social studies standards, such as cultural celebrations, or used for reading lessons, like variations of favorite fairy tales. This is a valuable resource for teachers or parents to introduce students to a variety of worlds and cultures they might not otherwise ever visit. 

Epic

            The Epic online library is a resource I have used in my classrooms for many years. Students thoroughly enjoy this website and have referred to it as “Netflix for books.” Students can have individual log-ins to the site and browse and favorite their own books; however, without a parent paid subscription, the student free version deactivates at 3:00 pm each day. The site is engaging, and students quickly learn how to navigate its uses. One of my favorite features from Epic is the broad range of genres and topics in the system. Students can search titles from life cycles to biographies, coding to fairy tales, and classic chapter books to social-emotional learning texts. Along with being able to assign texts to students, students have options to choose self read texts or audio books. A word of warning is that students can search and possibly see books on topics that are not age appropriate. One should also be cautious of videos that are on the site and can be found during free searches as well. Overall, this is a great resource for parents to have hundreds of titles in one place for their children, and it is the perfect website for a listening to reading station for teachers in the classroom. 

LibraryThing

            The LibraryThing website is a database of more titles than you could imagine. This is a valuable resource for teachers of all disciplines and grade levels. Teacher resource books, picture books, young adult novels, new publications, and decades old titles are all available in the catalog. Searches for literature can be conducted by title, author, or tag (words associated with a title, such as genre or topic). Connected to each search are reviews, conversations, descriptions, editions, connected texts, and more. Study guides, author pages, and collections can also be accessed. While this may not be a tool to give elementary students free access to, it would be increasingly beneficial to secondary students for research. Teachers and parents alike, have virtually any title available to them at their fingertips to use as they see fit for their students.

These three websites are only a small fraction of the digital resources available to students, teachers, and parents who wish to be immersed in the world of literature. As our digital world expands, so will our technological sources. As long as the goal of these digital tools is to familiarize our students with literacy skills and texts, they are worth our time to explore and share with our young readers.

References

A home for your books. LibraryThing. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from
https://www.librarything.com/home 

Inc., E. C. (n.d.). Instantly access over 40,000 of the best books & videos for Kids on Epic.

Epic. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.getepic.com/

University of Maryland. (n.d.). ICDL - International Children’s Digital Library. Retrieved
January 31, 2022, from http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

Selecting Literary Resources

     The goal of reading teachers is to get books into the hands of their students. Which books, though? Is there a specific criteria a teacher should follow to select appropriate texts? Let’s explore some best practices when it comes to selecting and evaluating literary resources.

Whether it be a class read aloud or a textbook adoption, teachers must determine which materials are best for their student population (McGraw Hill Education). Educators have to look past the traditional literature, memorable plot lines, and crowd favorites to what actually meets the needs of their students as well as their district’s expectations (Shearer et al., 2019). While choosing authentic literature that will support reading development is crucial to the text selection process, it is important to remember to include texts that will keep students engaged in reading. Careful text selection should include an array of reading levels, interests, topics, and styles. These titles should include recent publications, as well as those that have been loved for decades. 

Keeping in mind a classroom or district’s specific student population, a wide variety of genres and texts should make up a classroom library or district reading curriculum. One of the greatest areas of need in text selection is that of multicultural texts. While it is commonly thought that multicultural literature is devoted to storylines about minority ethnic groups, this definition is far too narrow. Diverse populations include people of differing cultural groups that cross color lines, religious groups, or even those with disabilities (Young et al., 2020). These literary works of underrepresented groups are where students are given the opportunity to see other worlds, compare their lives to another’s, and find themselves within the pages of a book (Reading Rockets). 

In this technological world in which we live, learn, and read, incorporating digital literacy into a classroom is just as important as hardbacks with pages to turn. The benefit of digital texts is that it offers students the chance to combine technological and cognitive skills to solve problems, collaborate, and create (Adobe). Reading and writing both functionally and critically allow students to be an active participant in the world around them. When selecting texts, or curriculum adoptions, choosing items that are offered both in print and digitally is a serious component to consider. The recently revised English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) state several learning objectives for students to master in both formats, such as utilizing dictionary tools (TEKS 3.3A) or delivering information in a written or multimodal format (TEKS 3.13H). Shearer et al. state, “To become fully literate in today’s world, students must become proficient in the new literacies of information and communication technology” (2019, p. 269). There are tasks and features that are not present in paper books that students must learn to be successfully literate in today’s world. 

No matter the format of the literature, it is most important that students are reading daily and across all disciplines. Today’s educators must be mindful of the impact text selection has on young readers as well as preparing them for future academic success.

References

Adobe for Education. (2020, October 15). What is digital literacy? cultivating digital literacy
[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU1X3QpX-90

McGraw Hill Education. (2017, August 2). How to select materials for literacy instruction
[Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI4vs5Cqjdw&t=16s

Reading Rockets. (2015, January 30). Mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors [Video].

Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc
Shearer, B.A., Carr, D. B. A., & Vogt, M. E. (2019). Reading specialists and literacy coaches
in the real world (4th ed.). Waveland Press, Inc.
Texas Education Agency. (2017). Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English Language
Arts and Reading. Texas administrative code. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from

https://tea.texas.gov/academics/curriculum-standards/teks/texas-essential-knowledge-and-skills

Young, T.A., Bryan, G., Jacobs, J.S., & Tunnel, M.O. (2020). Children’s literature, briefly
(7th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.