 Hi everyone, welcome back to Apples and tiaras. As you can see, I am here in my classroom today, and today I'm gonna be talking about an amazing classroom resource called Epic. If you've heard about Epic, but you're unsure what it is, I'm gonna explain everything to you today. Epic is a free online digital library that's used in over 87% of the classrooms in the United States. It provides students with over 25,000 books, educational videos, and tons of fun activities. Epic's library even includes titles such as Where the Wild Things Are, Big Nates, and my personal favorite National Geographic for Kids. So today I just wanted to share with you guys how I use Epic in my classroom and all about its wonderful features. One of the ways that I like to use Epic in my classroom is during reading intervention. During the first couple months of the school year, I noticed that my students who were doing the Read to Self Center were having a really hard time staying engaged, staying focused, and actually reading. So when one of my coworkers brought up Epic as an idea just for an exploration of books, a way to get students reading on computers, I took that idea and I ran with it. So every week my students have at least an hour and a half of time to spend on Epic, and this is their Read to Self Center. The intervention time is split up into 45 minutes and each student will have at least two days on Epic as their reading center. I've noticed that my students have way better reading stamina now since using Epic because they get to one, use technology, two, discover books that they may not be able to get in our school library or in my library. And part of the reasons why I use it during reading intervention is because it does have a feature that allows students to click on a word and it will not only read the word to them, but it will also give them the definition. So for my struggling readers who may need help decoding a word or may not know the vocabulary word or may not know the meaning of certain words, they are able to read independently now because they don't have to call for help to have me read a word for them or for me to give them a definition of a word, they can just do that independently. It also keeps track of how many pages my students have read and how long it took them to read it. So I can really monitor how much my students are actually reading during reading intervention and if they're taking their time reading or if they're just mindlessly flipping through the pages just to get through it, I can be able to say go back and reread the story. You went too fast. Another way that I like to use Epic in the classroom is during reading instruction. Just last week, my students and I did a study on the Arctic regions and the Antarctic regions. We used some of the texts from Epic to learn about these regions. We used them to take two column notes. We are an avid school, so we focus on two column notes which are also known as Cornell notes, but what we did was I typed into the search bar at the Arctic region and once I saw all of the texts come up, all I did was pick and choose the ones that I wanted my students to read. I assigned it to them as a collection and then when they logged on to Epic, they were able to open up their mailbox and then retrieve the books that I assigned to them. Do you have this one? I have it as a map. Where is it, Mia? I have it as a map. Oh, where is it? Where is it? I did not get it. I know this question. What's the answer? Omnivore. Omnivore. Oh, omnivore. Omnivore. No, omnivore. No, omnivore. Omnivore. Is it over, boy? Omnivore. Omnivore. Omnivore. Click the speaker button and let's see how it sounds. Some Arctic animals are omnivores. They eat plants. They also eat other animals. Oh, we don't know that word. Let's click it. Tarmigan. Tarmigan. A various type of bird is an omnivore. It eats plants, seeds, and insects. Then as a class, we read through the stories, we read through the informational text, and the students took notes as they were reading. Which word is it? Click it. It's a plant-eating animal. Hang on. Just a second. Don't start reading it. Just look through the pictures. It was really nice as well because the vocabulary words in the stories were able to be clicked on and described to them right then and there. My students also love the feature, read to me. Some stories are able to be read to my students. So not only can they physically read the story, but they can have the story read to them. Once we were done taking two column notes as a class, my students were able to branch out on their own and use Epic as a research instrument. They were able to type in the Antarctic region or the Arctic circle or Antarctica and then choose texts on their own and take notes by themselves. So for the books that I chose, I actually created a quiz from each of those. And I was able to assess my students' understanding of the text. I was also able to assess my students' note-taking skills because I knew what they'd be taking notes on, and I wanted to make sure that they were all held accountable. So you can create a quiz for each story that you have read or each text that is on there unless there's already a quiz created. But I believe you can create your own quizzes anyway. My kids absolutely love taking the quizzes after each story or each text because they love competing to see who can get 100%. And I love that they strive for success. Another way that we use Epic in my classroom is for choice time. So on Fridays, if they are done with their classwork for the week, they're done with their weekly assessments. They can grab a computer. They can log into Epic and they can explore. They love watching the videos on Fridays. I usually have videos only on Fridays, but there are videos like slime making. There's videos about animals. There's videos about basically any topic you can think of. National Geographic has a ton of videos. And then some of those videos even have quizzes as well. We also do reading challenges in the classroom using Epic. I challenge my students to read a certain number of books per week. And guys, they actually compare with one another to see who read the most books. I also use Epic as a homework slash reading for pleasure challenge. They can actually log on to Epic from home and utilize all of the tools and resources from Epic at home. They don't have to be in the classroom. I absolutely love using Epic in my classroom and it's been a game changer for us. It has really fostered the love of reading into my students. And honestly, I catch myself getting on Epic and exploring around there, watching the videos, reading the books. And I just can't say enough wonderful things about Epic. Epic's mission is to nurture a love of reading and learning in kids. Epic encourages kids to explore their interests in a safe, fun and kid-friendly environment. You can also find videos that encompass STEM and DIY activities on Epic for kids to follow. A lot of my parents have actually complimented Epic because they noticed that their kiddos are coming home from school, logging on and just spending most of their day on Epic, exploring, reading, learning, and above all, having fun. So this next portion of the video, I'm actually going to walk you all through the steps of signing up for Epic and getting your students connected. All right, guys, please excuse my terrible voice. I do have a cold, but here I am on the Epic home page. And I'm just going to kind of click through some of the features and just explain some of them to you as we move through this portion of the video. So as you can see, here is my name and my account settings, and I can go over to my activities. I can look at my account settings, my library, so things that I've favorited. I can look at student login information in mailboxes. So now I'm clicking on a fake roster that I just made with only myself in the class, but basically I can enable home access through here. Students do get to try for 30 days for free at home, and then they can pay for the membership, but students can use this for free at school as long as they are at school. So once you create a home invitation, then I like to go through the activities, and I'll just kind of quickly show you guys how to click on the assignments and collections. So you would click here, and then this is where once you have chosen a book that you like, you can add it to a collection or create one. And then once you're here, you can actually assign your students a task. And so here I am assigning my students all about Antarctica, and when they log on, they're going to see this entire folder for them in their mailbox. So I'm just going to assign this to myself. And I actually have to unselect myself for some reason. This was funny. It didn't want to work. But basically you would just click all the students that you want to actually read the story, and then you would assign them the folder. And then I'm going to show you guys what the Explore page looks like. So this is what the page looks like when my students log in. And they can pretty much explore all of the different topics they can look for. Read to me books, so students that need to be read to can look through that section. There's audio books, informational stories that they can read. They can also type in a topic and search for that topic and wait until you see all these books that come up. There they are. All these books on Martin Luther King, Jr. That's actually coming up this next week in my classroom. So I was searching for this earlier. Once they get into a book, you can see the AR level, the lexile level, how long it should take a student to read and the age range. Then the students could just click on the pages to turn them. They can also click on a word in the story, and not only will it give a definition for the word, but oftentimes there will be a speaker next to it and it will actually read the word to them. So I'm just going to click here through this book and get to the end so that I can show you guys what it looks like at the end. So let's imagine that I'm a student that is just mindlessly clicking through the book. I'm not actually reading. Once I get to the end, it's actually going to tell me that I need to take a little bit longer before I can actually finish this book. So it does hold students accountable for actually reading because they don't want to give students points and level them up if they haven't earned it. I'm going to go to my dashboard and just show you some more features so you can create quizzes here. You can see all the quizzes that you've made. You can assign reading. You can hear how you can log your students on Epic. You just add them to your roster. The students go to that website and then they enter in a class code. You can have a printable caterpillar that shows you your students' goals and challenges. And then any resource that you need is down there at the bottom. Now let's hear some thoughts from the students. I like Epic because... That's okay. You can listen. Okay. One, two, three, now. Yeah, go ahead. I like Epic because it's inspiring for the kids that I need that wants to learn a lot of stuff. I like Epic because you can read books. You can watch videos that you can take quizzes. I like Epic because if you're in trouble with reading a word, you can just tap on it and see what it means. Awesome. What else do you like about Epic? What I like about Epic, there's like a million books about all kids and all ages. Books for all kids and all ages. Do you like the books that are about like when we learned about the Antarctic? Wasn't it nice to have a book right there that you could learn from? Yeah, we don't have to read a book in our hands. We could just read a book in the computer. Yeah, it's nice to have it right there in front of you. So why do you like Epic? I like Epic because there's so many books to choose. I like when you don't know a word and it tells you the definition. Very good. Is there anything else you like about Epic? Do you like watching the videos? Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. I like Epic because they make me learn a lot of different things and I even like the books they made. Oh, very nice. Thank you. I like Epic because it has videos and lots of fun books and you can search up the book you want and there's videos and auto stories and when you click on a word that you don't know it will tell you about it and when you finish the book it will let you do the quiz and you can level up to get different characters. Oh, that's cool. Thank you. Why do you like Epic? I like Epic because you can read so many books and you can level up by when you read so many words you start leveling up. That's awesome. So how many books do you try to read per week? I try to read 20 or 30. 20 or 30 books a week. That's an excellent goal. And how many, what level are you on right now? Level 15. Wow, that's awesome RJ. Thank you. Here's my challenge to you teachers. Go try Epic. It's completely free to sign up. All you have to do is link your students into a classroom. Get them logged on and you're done. You can make an account on getepic.com. Epic also has an app in the Apple Store and there are never any in-app purchases or ads. It is a completely safe and trusted environment for your students. So if you're a teacher that has tablets or iPads in the classroom, you can definitely install that on your tablet and you know your students are going to be safe using that. Sorry for the costume change, but as you guys know, as a teacher, I do have lots of interruptions throughout the day. So I just wanted to close this video by saying, try Epic. Get logged on. Get your kids going. And I guarantee it's going to change your students' reading experience. It's definitely changed their experience for my class and my kiddos love reading. They love reading on Epic and I've even noticed some of them asking to read real books instead of reading on Epic. So it's definitely improving my students' love for reading. So if you don't already have your kiddos signed up for Epic, go and get on right now. It's so fast. It's so easy and it's free. Go right now. I'm challenging you. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching and thank you to Epic for all of the wonderful, wonderful inspiration. See you guys later.