Over the next month or two I will be encouraging guest blog posts on my blog sharing good practice in the series called chicken nuggets. Here is the first one, if you would like to contribute then please get in contact and let me know. Here is one on Kindles from one of our great English teachers at Saltash.net Suzie Allen, she is also been awarded a Microsoft UK Innovative teacher award too.
Context:
The Kindles are being used in English with the full range of ages –Year 7 to Year 12.
Objectives:
Getting students to read, especially middle and lower ability boys, is an age old struggle for English teachers – as is finding, and being able to afford, engaging texts for all interests and abilities. With the Kindles we hope to engage readers and be able to access a wider range of texts, and tools (dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopaedia…). Kindles can easily enlarge text and can also read text to students meaning they are useful
differentiation tools in the classroom.
Methodology – What did you do?:
We introduced the Kindles just after Easter and they have been received with excitement by both staff and
students. We have integrated them into lessons wherever a traditional book might be used. They have been used by Year 8s reading ‘War Horse’; Year 12 Literature students studying ‘A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’ and ‘Hamlet’; Year 9 reading short stories; Year 7 students exploring the language of ‘The Merchant of Venice’; and Year 10 students exploring language choices for descriptive writing exam practice and controlled assessment.
Kindles are incredibly easy to use and students have needed minimal input on how to use them – they have in fact being showing the teachers some tricks. We have even taken classes outside to sit on the grass and read their class book, with audio.
Technology needed:
The Kindles themselves cost £111 each and books range from free for the classics to £6-7 for a copy of a novel, which can be put onto 6 Kindle readers. This may seem expensive in the beginning; however as the
cost of just one class set of fiction books is on average £256 the Kindles are cost effective At the moment the secure school network doesn’t allow the Kindle’s ‘whispernet’ connection but this is being worked on. It takes a very short time to download a selection of texts to the Kindles and we started with a selection of study guides, the complete works of Shakespeare, novels and reference books that we use with classes across the age range in English.
Outcomes:
We have seen increased enthusiasm in students wanting to read, including lower ability students who were volunteering to read aloud to the class for the first time. The Kindles’ extra functions like enlarging text and speaking the text have enabled students to access texts easily. Especially with studying Shakespeare, I have found the ‘look up’ function invaluable in allowing students to understand the sometimes difficult text and they have shown more confidence in analysing the text because of this. The reference books available on the Kindle, the thesaurus for example, have encouraged students to consider
their word choices and, where perhaps they previously wouldn’t have looked up better synonyms to use, they have found the ease of use of the Kindles thesaurus a benefit to their writing. We have also been able to extend the choice of texts we can use as the cost of books on the Kindles is considerably less (and sometimes at no cost at all). This has meant we can choose from a wider range of texts and really select a book which suits the needs and interests of the specific class.
The Kindles are proving to be a wonderful addition to the everyday tools we use in the English classroom. They are fulfilling their purpose as versatile aids to learning and promise to continue to do so in the long term. In the future we hope to be able to access the internet with the Kindles to enable students to do short research
tasks, making the devices even more invaluable to the classroom. We also hope to extend the number of devices to allow larger classes to have full access to the Kindles and perhaps even, in the long term, have them replace paper.