 Welcome to reinventing book logs. I'm Angela with the seesaw team and I am so honored that you are here learning more and really excited to have Eric Robinson. A second grade teacher from Michigan with us here today. He has some amazing ideas to really ignite passion for reading with your students in a fantastic way. Using seesaw. So welcome Eric. Tell us a little bit about yourself and let's just jump in. Hi everybody. My name is Eric Robinson and I teach second grade and Chelsea Michigan and I've been teaching for 16 years. And you can get a hold of me a couple different ways. So number one is I have a Twitter handle at tech in second. And I don't tweet a ton, but I love to use this to connect with other educators. So you can definitely DM me if you have questions as you get through The things we're talking about or anything else to I also have a podcast called teachers talking tech that I do with few colleagues of mine that we've been doing about for about three years. And love to do and you might that's that's not me. Sorry. I know more corny jokes. I promise. There I am. So this picture was taken by a student of mine, Alba, and we have a photography club after school. So I asked her and she said I could use this for my From any presentation that I do. So there I am. All right, so let's get into this and and I have to say to I know how busy you all are beginning of the school year. And I really am honored that that you're here with Angela and I to listen to these ideas and I hope that it's worth your time and I hope that this is something you can use. So let me tell you a little bit about the kind of lens that I'm looking through as an educator when I want to change book logs like why change them. Why change anything. So in my classroom. It's a very student centered environment. You know, I if you've ever read Paul Solars has a book called learn like a pirate. And this is how I feel like he does where we're all like a pirate ship together. Right. And the kids are kind of like pirates right The kid they're unpredictable and and I want to be in the crow's nest in our classroom, not down on the deck. So really I want to give students that opportunity. To lead their learning. I want to focus on voice and choice in the classroom to so giving my kids voice and choice. And you know when you get into book logs. It's kind of the opposite of choice and voice right so seesaw. The part of the reason I love it is that it's roots are in giving kids a voice in the classroom. They get to choose how they share their work with you and it's not like a book log or a worksheet where you're basically giving them all the rules. Of how they're going to show their work. And I really want to stay with that theme when I do homework or anything else. And so number one, you know, research says flat out the book logs don't work. We still use them because we need a way to log that students are spending time reading and we all know as teachers how important it is to get those minutes in each day. That's important, but book logs do not motivate children. They're teacher centered right there for our our blogs there for our records, but it's not what readers do. None of us go to bed at night and think like you know what I'm going to read for 40 minutes and I'm going to do at least 25 pages. We just read. And so how do we get that intrinsic motivation to kids how do we get them excited about reading. And I will just quote it just kind of sums it all up is when reading is portrayed as something that one that's to be has to be forced to do students may draw the conclusion that it is not the kind of activity they want to engage in when given free time. So this is where I was thinking how can I get these kids going how can we develop reading habits. How can we encourage reading and sneak in some accountability as well. Right, because they're at home in the evenings of perfect time to read we want them reading. How do we develop that. So, I thought about this and I kind of put it out to the Facebook group last year and I asked other educators, like, what would they do how would they do this, and there's so many great ideas, and then it kind of clicked with me, which was seesaw is perfect for this. Now seesaw can be used as a replacement and I know that some people ask me. Well, why can't I just have my kids login from home, and they can just, you know, you know, share their reading like beginning middle and end or those kind of things. And I think that's fine, but that's basically just replacing how we've already done homework. We haven't changed homework in 100 years. So I was looking for a way to change it not just reinvent it using technology so let me just say that before we get going. So when you do this, you're going to share a challenge with your students via the family app. So you're actually going to be sending an announcement to parents with a seesaw challenge. Okay, now I don't know how many of you have used announcements, but parents cannot initiate a conversation with you. You must send them a message and then they can send something back to you. Okay, so I have a whole list, by the way, over here. I know that you can't click on this link. I will give you links. I promise at the end. But Angie Dresshander, who is an awesome seesaw master here from Michigan as well, helped start a Google list that has tons of ideas that you can use for different challenges. All right, so this is an example of what it might look like for my parents. Okay, so just as this week's reading challenge is to read a book you've never read before. And, you know, honestly, I don't really care too much about the challenge. Really, the idea is to give them something to do. Now, some of my kids love to dive into this. Other kids get creative. So you can see here, I always say any picture will do, and I'll gladly share it with the class. That's important because there's going to be times you want to do a challenge where you say, hey, read with a pet and then you're like, oh man, but what if somebody doesn't have a pet or whatever it is. So I always make it very clear any picture of you reading is great. You know, I know when I sent this one out, I remember somebody sent back one of them reading in a pillow for and I said, great. Anything is fine. Really, I just want them reading. Now, for me, I like to say my challenge is midweek, but just try to think of a time that's going to work for you. I definitely would not overdo these. Don't try to do them nightly or even every other day. The most I think that I would do or feel comfortable with doing would be twice a week. But midweek seems to work well for me. I send home the challenge and I keep them a secret and that's important too. If you keep your challenge a secret, that will motivate your kids to go home and ask their parents what is tonight's challenge, right? So again, it involves the parents and homework and involves them in helping their child get through this. But in the end, it's on the child to do the work. Now, you can see down here, I blocked their name, but one of the nice things about Messengers and CSaw in general is I can see who got my message and who did not. So it's a great way that if you're not getting stuff back from somebody, you can see, oh, maybe their parent is not actually checking the app. There might be something going on there. Which by the way, another link that I will share with you a little bit later, I know CSaw has videos and I made a video too that walked parents through how to use the app. So most parents are probably going to be using the family's app on their phones. They can do this with a computer, but it walks them through, how do I take a picture? How do I send it back? It's fairly simple, but just to make sure parents know what they're doing and not give you more work. So here's what the family sees. They get the message and then underneath the message, they have a little plus button. Now most parents will just send a message back to you and never look at that. But if they did tap on that plus button, they're going to see they have tons of options of ways to share back with you. Photos, drawings, videos, basically the same ways that your kids share with you in class. So maybe you can get more creative with this, and I'm even doing right now. And my goal this year is to get more creative with this. Maybe more than taking a photo. Maybe you could have a challenge one week where they draw something from a book they read, or maybe they record a quick video review of a book. It's really going to be your comfortability and what you think your parents will actually do, you know, for the challenge. Okay, so here is another part that's going to be very, very important for you if you want to. Oh, and I almost forgot, not for that yet. This is the video, and please steal this video and share it with parents. And then I know that seesaw wants you to make sure you know that families need to use the family app, not download the seesaw classroom app. That's important as well. And there are printables to help families, and there are videos for parents as well to walk them through the families app. Okay, so once we get back to this, this is the part that really motivates my kids. So they're not going to be motivated if they just send me a video and then I just put heart next to it or I reply with great job. That's not going to be enough. So what I really want to do to get that intrinsic motivation going is I want to share their pictures with the class. So I'm sure many of you do morning meetings or snack time or just a time during the day when it's time to share. And I make sure that I go through all of those pictures and things that parents sent back to me for their kids reading. And the kids feel like absolute rock stars. This is the part that really makes everything else go. So the kids that you're worried about, they'll never do this or this and that. If you give them the reason, they will go home and they'll say, hey, check seesaw, my teacher sent a challenge. And I know there are some folks that might be concerned already. Well, I don't have everyone connected or, you know, is there another way to share this? And there are just be creative. Like I had one parent a few years ago that wasn't connected to seesaw. So I just made sure I sent them emails. I would do the same thing here. If there's one parent, two parents or whatever not connected, send them the chance to email and have them reply via email. And it's just harder to do. They can still do it. It's just seesaw makes it so easy. Okay. So that's basically where it comes back to you. And that's the important part again is just to share it with the class. I don't really think that, you know, another question I get is, does it show up like in their feed, right? So other kids can look through their journal and comment. And it doesn't. But I think that's okay. I think it's okay is this is a time where it's not digital. You're having a meeting with your class. You're giving praise to kids for reading at home. You're having a conversation. I think that's more important than just having kids go through and make comments. But if you do want this to show up in your kids portfolio, you can screenshot each of these. And as the teacher, you just post them as that child. So you would just say, yes, I want to post. And then you just choose that child's name and post it just as if you were them. I hope that makes sense. But that's a way you can put it right into their portfolio. Because I know some people had great ideas where you could take this picture. The child could put it or you put it into their portfolio and then they can edit it and add to it. Maybe add their voice and say, here's what I was reading. So you can extend this if you want, but just know you don't have to. So you'll check your inbox. And that's where you're going to find those new messages. You're going to see a dot next to them. That is how you'll know that it's new. That's also how I keep track of who has shared with me each week. So we're not required in our school to have a checklist of who returned homework and that kind of thing. It's more of a general thing on a report card that we just say the pairs do homework all the time, sometimes never. So I don't have to have like a really strict data on who did this. But the nice thing is it looks just like a text. So you can easily tap on someone's name and go right back through and see how many times they replied to your reading challenges. And so that can give you an idea of whether or not they're doing this or not. And really it's like anything else. Just because you're doing this does not mean that all of a sudden everyone will be doing homework. I don't have a fix for that, but this is just a way to make it more valuable. So here's some tips for you. So the first one I talked about, post a screenshot of the shared item in the child's feed and then they can add to it and receive feedback from others digitally. That's one thing you do. Find a day or days of the week that you will share the challenge and be consistent. One thing that worked for me last year. This is an idea from a colleague. I love this. Instead of sending just the message on like Wednesday and saying, hey, it's time for a challenge. What she did and what I started doing is that I would send home an announcement or a pack for the week. So I might have a little packet with some different challenges or homework for that week. And then that way parents could do them and budget their time however they wanted. I think that it's a lot to ask where you would send home a challenge and say do buy tomorrow. I like that this is a little more natural, right? It's not something where they get home and it's like you must read your home. You have 15 minutes start reading. It really allows them to feel like, yeah, I want to read and I'm going to go read and I want to do it because I want to share. So my favorites that I share in this packet. So if you're looking for alternative to homework, stem challenges are always great. There's tons of them out there. I love these ones. I don't remember giving this idea but helpful human challenges. Like having a helping your parents write a grocery list, read to a brother or sister organizing books at home. Just giving kids things to do that are outside the box, but still working on soft skills or, you know, working in directly on writing or reading. Anything like that where it's not just a worksheet that kids are only completing just to bring back to you to put a checkmark or star on. Okay. All right. So those are some of my tips there. I do have some links for you and I know there will be questions here. So I really want to make sure we leave time for those two because there's so many different situations out there. And, you know, I know we're all creative and with the community out there that people will have some solutions, but I want to make sure that we have some time for that. These links will be provided to you, but if you want to write down these bitly links. The first one is the link to the Google list that's just all the different reading challenge ideas. And by the way, feel free to add to them. We love any ideas you come up with. And then the Seesaw family's tutorial. This link will take you to YouTube. And so it's very easy to share the video that I made with families walking them through how to use that Seesaw family app. And so you can take them right there and share that with your parents. And I would love if you did. All right. So I'm going to hand it back over to Angela and hopefully between she and I we can answer any questions that you have. Love it, Eric. I'm just every time I hear this idea, it gets me so energized. So thank you so much for sharing it. I love that you're going to pause on this screen so they're reminded how to get connected with our community. So yeah, we are going to jump into questions now. So if you're here live and you have questions, just start typing them in. I will read them aloud and Eric will help guide us through them. And while you are typing those in, if you are watching this recording, just note that you can get a certificate reviewing this recording. The code that you will need to enter to get the certificate includes these digits 102746. So that link will be in the email you received or the description on YouTube as well for the form to fill out to get the certificate. And as a reminder, those of you that are live listening to us right now, you don't have to worry about any of that because you are going to get it automatically. Absolutely. So, so many good things coming in, but I think I just want to recap really quickly, Eric. The basic flow. So the idea is as a teacher in the classroom, you are using the class app. You are sending an announcement. That's my reminder that we have more webinars coming today. You are sending an announcement to all families and the families will view that announcement of the reading challenge in the Seesaw family app. So as a teacher, you're not trying to figure out like, how do my students sign in at home and, you know, thinking about privacy concerns and all of that stuff. We want to keep this as simple as possible. So I love that about how you have set this up Eric. And then, of course, the fun is in the sense that the family can respond to that announcement in the form of a private message and include an attachment. So that can be the photo. They could, you know, the student could even add voice in the response to, you know, all of that. So any of the Seesaw tools they can use in your classroom are the same exact tools they have access to via the family app. So kind of keep that in mind. As Eric mentioned, too, these are not going into the student journal or portfolio. You would have to move them in to that if you have, you know, that need or purpose that you want to tackle. So just a couple of things to note there. We're going to go into live questions now, but I know Eric would love for you to reach out to if you have additional questions outside of this session. But here we go.