 Welcome to Reducing the Reading Gap, Creating and Adapting Openly Licensed Books for Elementary School Children with Todd Lamar, Kate Williamson, Sonia Portella, and Sophie Carrick. What is the Reading Gap? Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that in 2019, 66% of 4th grade students in the U.S. were not meeting grade-level proficiency benchmarks for reading with rates highest amongst Black, American Indian, and Latinx students. The statistic is referred to as the Reading Gap. Elementary school children who do not become proficient readers by 3rd grade are to increase risk for lower reading achievement later in elementary, middle, and high school. The Reading Gap is situated within the Achievement Gap, both of which refer to outputs, while the Opportunity Gap refers to inputs, the unequal or inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities, and draws attention to the obstacles students face in an inequitable system. There are various reasons for the Reading Gap, but two reasons that are identified in numerous studies are lack of access and reduced exposure. Studies have shown that families with a lower socioeconomic status, SES, live in neighborhoods where fewer children's books are available, have fewer books in the home, and engage in shared reading less frequently. This gap in access to reading material and exposure to less frequent shared reading compounds over time and can negatively impact children's literacy and academic achievement. Open Educational Resources, OER, have the potential to have an impact on the Reading Gap. OER, free and open access children's books, can be created, adapted, translated, and widely shared. As a result, children's books are much more easily accessed and hold the potential to support book engagement and positively impact literacy and academic growth. In this presentation, we will share a few OER children's books we have created and discuss how we made them using OER so that others can create them too. Hi, I'm Sophie Carrick. I am a master's student in child and adolescent development at California State University, Sacramento, and I will be sharing my story with you today titled, No, Not Kapusnyak. So it is a story that is written in both English and Ukrainian, so I'll share just a few pages. Mama, I'm Golodny, said David. His tummy felt empty. It will be ready soon, Mama replied. Tell your sister to set the table. Hmm, what are you making for dinner? Asked David. Kapusnyak, Mama said. Ew, I hate cabbage soup, David exclaimed. Or maybe it's bulia would make it taste better, he thought. Or even some yablaki could make the soup sweeter, he mused. No, onions and apples wouldn't do. David thought. David searched through the grocery bag, trying to find the magic ingredient. All right, that's all I'll be sharing with you all. Thank you so much for listening. This second example is from Jennifer. The project of writing and reading her own authored children's book was especially meaningful to her because she had just delivered her first child. While recording the audio for the reading, her newborn was in her arms. Yichiwa. Xiao Wugui,生活在水里, Xiao Tuzi,生活在大树下. 一天, Wugui Mama說,奶奶悲痛,她需要爸爸媽媽去幫她. Xiao Wugui說,哈,那我自己在家會很無聊的. Xiao Bai Tu說, Xiao Wugui,我也一個人,要不要一起玩? My name is Sonia Portella, author of Can You Imagine. When writing, I felt similar to the characters in the book because they built upon my imagination. I wanted to create a story that was relatable and fun to engage with. Can you imagine? Rawr, says Zoe. Can you imagine being a lion? Hmm, said Joey. He then said, I think, I think, I think that's a great idea, Zoe. Lions are the king of the jungle. Yeah, so let's be lions, said Zoe. Joey and Zoe, imagine the world they can roam together, where lions ran, and brothers and sisters roared. Rawr, rawr! Can you imagine a rainbow kingdom in the sky, said Zoe? Yeah, where dinosaurs and sharks could fly, said Joey. Together, Zoe and Joey had out of this world ideas. Through their imagination, there was nothing they couldn't do. Brothers and sisters don't always agree, but Zoe and Joey learned something. You know what I can't imagine, said Zoe. A world without you, said Joey. The last examples from Bianca, who not only wrote a great book for children, but also created a very engaging audio reading enhanced with background music. Journey of Dreams, written by Bianca Dobre, illustrated by Catrine Cozer. There once was a friendly yellow tortoise who lived in a beautiful meadow where the sun was always shining. His name was Mr. Tort, and his dream adventure was to journey to the sun. While he started on his journey, he saw a snail all alone sitting on a leaf. Hello little snail, my name is Mr. Tort, and I'm going to the sun. Would you like to join me? I've always wanted to go on a journey somewhere, but since I'm so small and slow, I never had the courage. Thank you for inviting me. Now my dream can come true too. So Mr. Tort and Little Snail continued the dream journey to reach the sun. Along the way, he came across an old friend of Little Snail. Those were a few examples of amazing OER children's books written by a few of my amazing college students. All of the students used the illustrations from the original OER books and simply removed the original text to add their own text. In addition to remixing OER children's books by writing your own text, you can also remix the illustrations. Now, we would like to show you our process for remixing the text and illustrations of OER children's books. What you are seeing on the screen are the pages of a currently published OER children's book. The storyline is about a birthday girl who goes shopping for a new dress to wear to her party. Her mother presents her with dresses in various colors, but she says no to all of them, up until the last dress. A deaf colleague and I are currently remixing this book to create a bilingual version in American Sign Language, ASL, and English. Please note that these pages in our remixed version represent a very early draft of the book. However, we thought it would provide great insight into the initial stages of the creation process. We had two main goals for our book. First, we wanted to create a bilingual book by adding in ASL signs, translating each of the English color words. To do this, we used openly licensed images of ASL signs from deaf signers. Thus, the book is made possible by combining together numerous OER sources. Second, we wanted to expand the book to include more color words. So we added pages and are currently editing the images to include more color words. For example, the page on the screen is of a dress that was originally blue, but we colored over it to turn it into a red dress. We also added a black dress with white polka dots and even a rainbow color dress. In addition to adding more dress colors, we created new dress designs. We did not just want to change the colors and have the same dress design shown repeatedly, so we created new designs for some dresses. For example, the page on the screen originally was of a pink dress, but we changed it into a black dress with white polka dots. And this page originally had a green dress, but we changed the color to purple and are playing around with adding a white star pattern to it. This way, a deaf child can read the story and learn the ASL signs for 11 color words rather than only the four colors the original version of the book presented. Furthermore, we plan to revise the English text with our own text and add in the ASL sign for each dress color. In this way, you can see how we started with an OER book and remixed it by modifying the images, changing the text, and adding in another language. The end result is a completely new book.