How can educators implement Bookshare materials in the classroom?
Page 6: Bookshare in the Classroom
Educators can seamlessly and easily integrate Bookshare into their classroom instruction so all students can access the same information simultaneously. Doing so helps ensure that students with print disabilities can access, enjoy, and make meaning of content in the format that works best for them. Read on for tips to help harness the power of this tool in the classroom.
Setting Students Up for Success
Students who have encountered barriers to reading often experience frustration, discouragement, and reluctance to read. However, Bookshare can increase student motivation and engagement so that reading becomes a more positive experience. Educators can facilitate students’ success by:
- Discussing their interests to discover genres and books they want to read
- Familiarizing them with the devices and tools available in different environments (e.g., home, school)
- Teaching them how to personalize and customize their reading experience (e.g., adjusting speed, enabling text highlighting)
- Helping them understand which devices, formats, and customizations work best for them
- Encouraging them to explore and ask questions as needed
- Ensuring that the student’s other educators are knowledgeable about Bookshare and are prepared to support them
For Your Information
Educators must also plan for the logistics of technology use in the classroom. For instance, they may need to:
- Designate a secure storage location for individual devices
- Develop a procedure for when and how students access devices
- Assign headphones for students who need to listen to books in the classroom
- Become familiar with basic troubleshooting steps for software and hardware
Finding and Assigning Bookshare Materials
Recall that students with Organizational Memberships can only read Bookshare materials that an educator has assigned within the platform. Educators can be proactive by determining what materials will be used throughout the year, logging into Bookshare, searching for a text, and assigning it to a student. This allows the student to access the text within their account. The video below offers step-by-step instructions for finding and assigning materials (time: 1:21).
Transcript: Finding and Assigning Materials
Bookshare has over 1,000,000 titles in the collection. To do a standard search, enter a search term in the search text box located on the Explore Our Library page. You can search by title, author, or ISBN. For example, let’s search for Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume by typing into the search box and selecting the search button. The search results will be presented in a list. Looking for a particular topic or a specific grade-level text? Use the Advanced Search feature to narrow your search by one or more search criteria.
Educators who are part of an Organizational Account can assign books to students who are signed up for Bookshare through that same organization. To assign a book, educators should log into Bookshare with their username and password. After finding the book to be assigned, select the Assign button. Next, select the student or students to assign the book to and select the Assign button. Educator students must log into Bookshare with their username and password to view their assigned books. Once the student logs in, they will find these books under the Assigned Books link on their My Bookshare page.
If an educator finds that a text is not already in the Bookshare collection, they can easily request that it be added. In most cases, Bookshare can obtain books for students because of its partnerships with many publishers. The video below offers step-by-step instructions for requesting materials (time: 1:05).
Transcript: How to Request a Book
Can’t find the book you need? No problem! You can request it from Bookshare. If the book is for a U.S. student, there’s a good chance that we can get it and add it to the collection. If it’s for a member who isn’t a U.S. student, we’ll do our best to add it to the collection as soon as we can. To request a book, log into your Bookshare account, go to the Help Center page, and select the Request a Book link. Next, select the Book Request Form link. Please give us as much information as possible about the book. If it’s for a U.S. student, make sure to note that. You will receive an email confirming your request. The Bookshare team will process your request as quickly as we can. If possible, we will acquire the book and add it to the collection. When the book is added, you will receive notification via email. At any time, you can check the status of your book request by selecting My Requests on your My Bookshare page.
Did You Know?
To save educators time, Bookshare offers premade, curated reading lists (e.g., by topic, author, award, series) that can be easily assigned to students. Additionally, educators can create and assign their own reading lists (e.g., grade-level lists, summer reading lists) within Bookshare.
Teaching with Bookshare
Because Bookshare simply offers students an alternative way to read, educators can continue to use the same evidence-based instructional strategies they are already using. Regardless of how students access text-based materials in any content area, educators should implement various instructional strategies to support students’ comprehension:
- Before reading (e.g., KWL charts, preteaching vocabulary)
- During reading (e.g., columnar format, Question-Answer Relationships [QAR] strategy)
- After reading (e.g., quick writes, Socratic seminars)
KWL chart
An instructional tool that students use to indicate what they already know about a topic (K), what they want to learn (W), and what they have learned after reading (L).
preteaching vocabulary
A strategy to prepare students with the unfamiliar words they will encounter when reading a text; often includes a statement of the definition, examples and nonexamples of the word in sentences, and review.
columnar format
A note-taking strategy in which students divide their paper into two or three columns, allowing them to visually organize different types of information (e.g., main ideas, details).
Question-Answer Relationships (QAR) strategy
A questioning strategy that emphasizes the relationship between a question, a text, and background knowledge; readers first must understand what the question is asking and then determine if the answer is directly in the text, requires the reader to think and search, or can only be answered independently.
quick writes
Short, informal writing tasks that take less than ten minutes in which students are prompted to recall, organize, and communicate their reactions to reading; a type of exit ticket.
Socratic seminar
A formal discussion of a text in which the leader asks open-ended questions and students listen closely to the comments of others, think critically, and articulate their own thoughts in response to the original question and the thoughts of others; students work cooperatively to synthesize, justify, and extend their learning in a discussion format.
In these interviews, two teachers, Nicole Harris and Paula Rubin, discuss how they integrate Bookshare into their classroom instruction to provide more equitable learning opportunities for students with print disabilities.
Transcript: Nicole Harris
What really sold me on Bookshare is having access to all of the texts. Teachers are super busy. [laughs] We don’t have time always to go out and try to find something, so we choose what we do have readily available. So for Bookshare to have all of those books and all of those different texts, and I say different texts because it’s not limited to just books because we have articles, nonfiction articles, and different types of books on one particular topic.
As a teacher, I’m always thinking about different ways to implement strategies to help my students. For those who are in need of Bookshare, the students have the ability to download and access various books in the classroom using Bookshare, which is very, very important. As the teacher, I can monitor my students’ growth. For example give them pre-reading, or during-reading, or post-reading questions that will help really assess their understanding and assess their growth as they are accessing the Bookshare books.
Another way is book club or literacy circles. It’s really important that all of my students are able to access the books that they want to read within their Lexile level. Bookshare is able to help those students to be able to access those books. For example, I know that I’ll be doing a graphic novel next school year, so that is just something that’s really exciting that my kids can actually obtain in Bookshare.
If you have a child who has visual impairments or physical impairments, those kids who would qualify for Bookshare, if they don’t have access to those books, then they miss out, and that’s not fair to them. So that’s why I say in real time, all the kids are able to keep up, all the kids are able to benefit from group discussions. So having a turn and talk and having the kids discuss what they just got through reading in the classroom as opposed to waiting until they go home and having to use whatever software that they may have at home to help them or assist them with reading comprehension is really important that they have it in school so they can feel included.
So as a result, Bookshare helps build an equitable community in my classroom due to the wide range of books and other texts available along with assistive features that Bookshare offers.
Transcript: Paula Rubin
Bookshare is a resource to advance student success by implementing accessible and adaptable literacy to both whole and small groups. Educators can continue to use the same evidence-based instructional strategies that are already in use to support students’ comprehension.
Incorporating quick write strategies into your instructional routines help students to remember, organize, and manage information. They are short, informal writing and drawing tasks that can be assigned before, during, and after reading. Students can communicate thoughts, experiences, and reactions to what they’re reading and learning. They typically take less than 10 minutes, can be informally evaluated, and require little planning. Quick writes can be informal notes, a list of facts, one-paragraph summaries, questions, drawings, short answers, tweets, text messages, and exit and entrance tickets—three things you learned, two interesting facts, and one question.
QAR (or Question-Answer Relationship) is another strategy that helps students monitor comprehension by understanding the four different types of questions. By modeling think-aloud strategies, the teacher guides students through the process of determining types of questions and what they’re asking before developing an answer. QAR teaches students how to ask questions about their reading, find answers to questions, connect the reading to their own schema, and use higher-level thinking skills. The teacher models the four types of questions with examples and allows students to practice the strategy independently or collaboratively. Students are taught Right There questions, literal questions found directly in the text; Think and Search questions that ask the reader to collect information from various parts of the reading and put it all together; the Author and Me questions, which are based on information found in the text and their own experiences, students need to formulate inferences to answer the question; On My Own questions where the answer is not in the text, the answer is based on your own experiences and knowledge.
Adaptable literacy materials and multilevel supports with evidence-based strategies provide qualifying students the opportunity to an equitable, inclusive education.
