Unlocking Literacy- Empowering Learners with a Multimodal Approach

Unlocking Literacy-Empowering Learners with a Multimodal Approach

Like many states, Wisconsin has recently adopted some new legislature around policies on evidence-based reading practices. In Wisconsin, that legislature is known as Act 20: This past school year, Wisconsin implemented this new law, ACT 20, aimed to reform early literacy instruction, assessment and intervention in our K-3rd grade students. Our Literacy instruction is to be based on the Science of Reading; explicit instruction covering: phonemic awareness, phonics, background knowledge, oral language development, vocabulary building, writing, fluency, and comprehension. So knowing this, our district purchased and adopted a curriculum that would support the Science of Reading and support Act 20.

Though the curriculum that we decided to go with, hit all of the marks to support the reading instruction, it lacked engagement (black line masters bound in to a workbook), it was difficult to navigate, inaccessible and limited options for creativity.

Along with Melissa Piette (https://education.apple.com/profile/AppyTeacher), and Tammy Trzebiatowski (https://education.apple.com/profile/ttrzebiatowski), we saw this as an opportunity to build something powerful for students and teachers. We decided to transform these boring and inaccessible workbooks into Pages books, with a customizable template. There were four modules for each grade level that we would work to create a workbook for in grades K-7th grade. We built them all with the same style and flow for consistency. Not only did we transfer the content into a more accessible format, but we also took it upon ourselves (with the help of our reading coaches) to modify activities to add engagement and creativity. We also wanted to harness the power of recording audio within Pages for students to practice their fluency, an important piece of reading instruction.

A sample page from the Kindergarten workbook. Students use the eraser from the drawing tools to erase the prompt hidden behind each colored block.

We know that fluency is an important of effective reading instruction. Using the "Record Audio" feature within Pages allows our students to record themselves reading a passage of literature throughout the week of instruction. Students can then listen to their recordings to hear the improvement they make throughout the week.

A sample workbook page for students to practice their fluency by inserting a recording of them reading the passage aloud each day that week.

We also wanted to take advantage of the ability to customize each workbook to include the option to add additional pages that might be pertinent to each learning module. It is so great that Pages allows you to customize a template that you are building for students.

An example of how we worked to customize the Pages template for each workbook to include pages that learners might need additional copies of.

This experiences has reminded me the power of collaboration and the power to support curriculum mandates at your district. Offering our teachers these digital workbooks allowed for us to show the power of Apple Tools like the Pages app. Many of our students are now using their print access accessibility tools, aware of creative options like inserting drawings, shapes, recording audio and are aware of all the multimodal options for them to share their learning!