 Welcome to my very first blog. It's all about how to make an interactive read aloud using two different tools, Epic and Screencastify. So my name is Keeley. I'm a kindergarten teacher and working on my master's in instructional technology. I happen to be a huge fan of picture books and read alouds. If you don't know what a read aloud is, it's when you're using your literacy standards intentionally inside of a really relevant story. And they are awesome, but I have a huge issue this year. I'm a virtual teacher and a lot of my students don't always make it to my meetings. I want them to have the same literacy rich content that my other students are having. So that is a major issue. Another issue is that when I do have meetings, sometimes the students cannot see the story that I am trying to show them. They're missing those crucial pieces of the illustrations and some of the vocabulary that I want them to see. The same thing happens when you are in the brick and mortar classroom. You're sitting down, you find an awesome book, but it's about this big and all of the kids in the class cannot see and suddenly they're all playing tug of war with their t-shirts. I don't know why, but we all know it happens. So I found a solution that helps the students hear my voice even if they're not with me and be able to see all the parts of the story. I simply go on Epic, find the story that I want, grab Screencastify, read over the story using my voice and inserting all of the talking points that I want to tell about. And then the students can hear me, they can see the pictures and it's really awesome. All right, let me show you how it's done. So making an interactive read-aloud is pretty easy. Just go to epic.com, then click on my account. And if you don't have an account, then check out a tutorial because you'll love it. There are tons of books for your kids and you to read. Put in the title. I already know I'm doing the little red hen because I love the fun voices and the kids love to read with me. I'm going to choose this little red hen because I know as I do my think-alouds, it really lends a hand to doing parts of a narrative, such as character, setting, action and emotion. Once you've decided the story that you love, it's time to put your voice on it. So I'm going to use Screencastify. I already have it saved. I also have the paid version. You may want to look into that depending on how long the story is that you will read. So I'm going to click it. And then I'm going to make sure it's on desktop and microphone. Then I'm going to click record. And on my other computer, I have two options that say screen one and screen two. This is screen two. I'm clicking that and I hear a three, two, one. Let's go. Little red hen. Once upon a time, a rooster and a mouse and a little red hen lived together in a small brown house with a red roof. This is the time where I might put in a think-aloud. Hmm. I noticed the author said, the little red hen, the mouse and the rooster. I wonder if those will be the characters. One day the little red hen found a grain of wheat lying on the ground. Look what I found, said the rooster to the mouse. I will plant it in the earth. Who will help me? Not I, said the rooster. Not I, said the mouse. Then I'll do it myself, said the little red hen. And you can go on and once you've finished your story then you can stop your recording. Notice up top it is red so that means that it is currently recording. There are two ways to stop it. You can click the button or you can just click the stop sharing button. I'm going to click the red button right here. Click stop. And as it comes up there are some different options. You can listen to your story. You can edit your story as well, especially depending on what type of screencastify you own. And then there are some sharing options. You could share it to your YouTube. It will go to your Google Drive and be saved, which is pretty awesome. So I want to show you how it has went to my Google Drive. And right here you can see that it is prepped and ready to go. And then I can listen. I hope that you found my tutorial about making an interactive read-a-loud with Epic Endscreen Castify Helpful. If you want to follow me for more tips and tricks on read-alouds, just go here. And remember we read on Wednesdays.