Template for Literature Circles Learning Journal

Use this template for Lit Circles in Keynote with your students. Distribute the file and show students how to add pages from the template chooser for the various roles they will take on during Literature Circles each week.

Download this template for Literature Circles and open in Keynote

Postcard template for Quick Writing Activities

Use a postcard template for students to practice writing in smaller chunks than a full-length written assignment.

The following templates can be downloaded and shared with students so that they can customize both the content and the design without the fear of "the blank page."

Use this activity as an exit ticket, an end-of-unit review, a mini book report, geography practice, or even grammar practice (use one of each of the 4 types of sentences in your postcard).

Early finishers can add a photo or drawing on the second slide and design the front of the postcard as well.

• Download the postcard template as a Keynote file (for iPad or Mac)
• Make a copy of the postcard template as a Google Slides presentation

Third Grade Authors publish book about their community's history

The ABCs of Our Community, O'Neill on Apple Books Store

O'Neill Elementary's 3rd Grade Reading class, under the direction of Mrs. Julie Pistulka along with help from Katie Morrow, ESU 8, recently published their latest version of an annual community history research project. This year, the creative student authors compiled and shared their information in the form of an alphabet book.

Using a Pages template, each "letter" consists of 3 pages:
1) a stanza of poetry and photo gallery on the topic
2) written report from student research
3) student-created artwork

Students added audio narration for all the text with the newest feature of Pages books - Audio Recordings.

Learn more about the community of O'Neill, Nebraska as well as student creation of digital books with Pages on iPad by downloading the book from the Apple Books Store.

Students Authoring Books with Pages

How has the book feature in Pages helped your students improve literacy skills? @katiemorrow #PagesBookChallenge #InternationalLiteracyDay #AppleEDUchat pic.twitter.com/HGIStk04qq

— Apple Education (@AppleEDU) September 2, 2018

Every year on September 8, International Literacy Day is celebrated. In conjunction with this year's celebration, AppleEDU has launched a #PagesBookChallenge. The challenge is simple. Create a digital book with your students in Apple's Pages app (free creation app for Mac or iPad). Then, simply tweet a short synopsis of the book along with its cover and tag #PagesBookChallenge.

Turn your students into authors using the new book feature in Pages! Tweet a description of the plot, include a visual of the cover, and tag #PagesBookChallenge. #NationalReadABookDay #InternationalLiteracyDay pic.twitter.com/wkJBTfJ3rz

— Apple Education (@AppleEDU) September 3, 2018

To encourage all educators to participate here a series of short tips and recommendations for creating digital books with Pages.

1. Begin a new Pages project using the Books templates.

Tip: Use Portrait templates for primarily text-based books (so that the reader can resize the text and the pages will adjust accordingly) and Landscape for fixed layout books (where you control the exact design and layout of the pages and the reader cannot adjust).

2. Author and Edit as you normally would in the Pages app. 

The beauty of the iWork suite, in my opinion, is its simplicity and consistency across apps. Unleash your creativity!

3. Add narration with authentic audio

On Mac: Create a Quicktime Audio Recording and drag icon next to filename onto your Pages document.
On iPad: Tap the +, choose the Media tab, and Record Audio, then add to page.

4. Export as ePub for Publishing and Sharing.

Title your book and name the author. Set your options for book cover: (None, from first page, or upload your own).

There you have it! Anyone can create a book with Pages. 

 Student books authored in Pages by Mrs. Troester's English 8 class, Spring 2018. (Science "Explainer" books for younger learners)

As educators the possibilities are endless when authoring books with Pages. To help learners experience authentic authoring, encourage them to work through all stages of the writing process. Here is a 60 second reminder of how to do so within the Apple ecosystem.

Finally, teachers can use Pages templates to help students focus more on the content of their books, and less on the the design of the pages. Whether for professional learning experiences, class books where every student authors a piece, or even shorter individual writing projects, simply create a Pages book as a starting template. Share the Pages document as a starting point and allow the learners to customize the content. Be sure to take advantage of the following features:

Media placeholders

Add image gallery placeholders from the Media button. This is a preset placeholder for the author to add an entire gallery of images.

Add text boxes and utilize Paragraph Styles

Text boxes are automatically ready as placeholders. Simply change the paragraph style and/or formatting.

Build your own photo/video placeholder

Add an image (or screenshot). Select the image and choose:
On Mac: Format > Advanced > Define as Media Placeholder

Add pages as desired and distribute to all your budding authors.  

I cannot WAIT to see what creative ideas you and your students have when creating books in Pages!

4 Types of Sentences... Zoom Clues in Clips!

Shirley Rossman, 4th grade teacher at West Holt Elementary, just finished teaching her students about the four types of sentences. In order to reinforce these key concepts, she had the idea to adapt the concept of "Zoom Clues" videos made in Apple's Clips app and challenge her students to demonstrate mastery.

Here is the project workflow:

1. Students choose a "mystery object" and author FOUR sentences (one of each of the four sentence types: declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory) giving clues about the object's identity. 
2. Students take a photo of their chosen mystery object with the iPad camera. The image should be fairly close up, but show the entire object, as this will be the view shared as the "answer" to the Zoom Clues video. 
3. Students start a new project in Clips and add a poster image to introduce their video.
4. From the Library, bring the photo of the mystery object into the "stage." Pinch to zoom in as far  as possible, and position the image in a way that guessing the object could be challenging. Add a label with the first clue and press the big red record button to add to the Clips project. 
5. Zoom out just a little and/or change the viewpoint, add the second sentence clue with a new label, and record the clip. 
6. Repeat for the last two sentence clues. 
7. Add a conclusion slide that shows and reveals the answer.
8. Add music and export the final video to share it!

Here is a sample "4 Types of Sentences Zoom Clues" that the West Holt 4th graders and I quickly made together, but hopefully soon they will share some more clever examples of student creativity! Check back soon!

Critical Literacy: Text Dependent Reading & Writing for All

Critical Literacy: Text Dependent Reading and Writing for All from Katie Morrow

Also, the accompanying Canvas course is public as well: http://bit.ly/CritLit