Guided Reading Independent Activity with IPads

Just thought I’d share something that worked well today during guided reading this week.

I had been thinking about how I could make more of the Ipads during Literacy and Guided Reading, but I did not really want to spend anymore cash on elaborate ebooks or do something for the sake of it.

I came up with an authentic context using the World Book Day App and a google form. The app contains extracts from books and some specially written full texts too. The authors featured have already proved popular with some of my class and certainly texts like Charlie Higson’s Zombie series look  very appealing to my year six boys!

The task could have been look at the books in the app that i have downloaded for you and keep out of my hair while i read with my focus group, but to give it authenticity and focus I included the survey and recommendation aspects too.

Once children had skimmed through or even lost themselves in one  the ebooks, they could then take the opportunity to fill out the details on a google form. As they entered their details into the form they  their preferences appeared live on the whiteboard at front of the class in spreadsheet form, I made the form and the accompanying data accessible to other members of staff too!

In this way I could keep an eye on who had completed the task and who needed to add more to their entry. What’s more – and this is where the authenticity comes in – the Literacy coordinator now had an idea as to what texts to order for upper key stage 2, or at least my class.

An example of one of the responses :

After reading through some Anthony Horowitz, one boy submitted this via the google form:

We should have this book in our school because it is an action packed adventure book that I’m sure all of the boys would love! I would recommend this book from age 9 to 14. There are a series of these books which are all particularly exciting , we could make a decision on either getting this book or getting a different one from the series.

A note about google forms

These are very easy to create, but the url they generate is very long. I would suggest using a service like bit.ly to shorten the web address. You could also use add to home screen on the Ipad, which will create an icon on your ipad pointing to the google form.

Doing it this way also makes the children believe it is another app. There is a helpful video on creating a google form here.