SSR Selfie

About a month ago I heard something I'd never heard in a class before, "Yay, SSR!" This year (2018), I am teaching the learners in my class that generally enjoy reading and comprehend their reading better, however this child wasn't particularly into reading. I decided to investigate deeper and found that my learners from last year who weren't particularly into reading also enjoyed my SSR activity.

SSR Selfie is an independent reading activity that I tried to model on social media use without actually getting onto social media thus keeping a bit more control and safety for the learners. The activity involves learners reading a book, taking a selfie with their book, then retelling or explaining what they have read. For some learners this could be an entire book or text, for others it could be a few pages in a novel they're reading. The point is that they discuss what they have read during their SSR time. The activity doesn't stop there however. Because I have made it on a shared Google Slide, this gives other learners the opportunity to check out what their classmates or friends have been reading and leave a comment. The children enjoy being able to talk about what they have been reading and leaving comments on other children's posts.

What is the upshot? Integrating learner voice into a task can yield increased motivation and buy-in for a learning activity. I want to try something similar for writing and maths activities.

Below are some examples of how it worked out this term. Here is a link to the template. If you like it, please leave a comment.