Use Chirbit to Practice Reading Skills in a FUN Way

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday Linky.  This past week I had the opportunity to present at a technology conference.  To be honest, using technology intimidates me.  There are sooooo many things that can go wrong and  I feel that my kiddos ALL need my help at the EXACT.SAME.TIME -- which causes me to lose my cool.  So with that being said, I was impressed with myself for actually having something to share at a technology conference.  

Last year I realized my kiddos were not making as much progress as I wanted with their reading fluency and summarizing skills. We talked about it, I modeled it, they practiced it, but for some reason, it just wasn't sticking.  

Luckily for me, my problem was solved when I was introduced to Chirbit. A FREE and SUPER EASY website that allows you to record and save audio files.  You can have your kiddos record a cold reading of a passage and save it. Then they can listen to their recording and use a rubric to evaluate themselves. Give them a few days to practice the passage, and then head back to Chirbit and have them rerecord themselves reading the same passage. Now they can reflect on their improvements as a reader. 

So the fist step would be to go to Chirbit (CLICK HERE) and sign up for an account. Your students will share your account, so make sure the user name and password you select are easy for your kiddos to remember. I just used the log-in name and password (they all have the same log-in and password) my kiddos use in the computer lab for this website.

Once you have your account set up, decide what reading skill you would like your students to practice.  Chirbit allows your students to record themselves and then save their recording. So when we used Chirbit for the first time, I wanted my students to practice their fluency skills.  I gave each student a reading passage and had them record themselves reading it (you can use any passages you have, or copy a page out of a book and have your kiddos use that). This was a cold reading since they didn't have previous exposure to the text. After it was recorded and saved (we saved the passages like this: Leah 1 My Dog -- which is name; 1 for cold reading and 2 for warm reading; title of text) they listened to themselves reading the passage.

I passed out these worksheets to help with the process, and let me tell you I WAS BLOWN AWAY with their responses. They totally exceeded my expectations and really picked up on their strengths and areas for improvement.

There's one worksheet for each area of fluency (expression, pace, and accuracy) and the last one combines the three aspects into one sheet.

CLICK HERE to download these sheets for FREE!

Once your students have completed their cold reading and reflected on it, have a class discussion or speak with them individually. Have them tell you what they did really well, what surprised them, what they need to work on.  My kiddos provided some awesome ideas and I bet yours will too.

You will also need to tell your students that they will record themselves reading this same passage again.  I typically give my students 4 - 7 days to practice the passage (the number of days just depends on our schedule) and then we head back to the computer lab to rerecord (there's also a Chirbit App available for only 99¢).



After we practiced our fluency with Chirbit, we practiced retelling different texts. Here's the sheet I created for that.

CLICK HERE to download the retelling sheet (it's actually in the same document as the fluency sheets from above).



Another aspect of Chirbit that I love is that you can get a QR code for each recording.  For each of my students I copied the QR code from both of their recordings into a table, then I printed it off and sent them home. My kiddos were super excited to share their readings with their families.

Here's one of my student's Chirbits.




My girls from Primary Peeps are having an absolutely amazing giveaway that you NEED TO ENTER.  You could win a $100 Amazon Gift Card.  CLICK HERE to be taken to it (scroll to the bottom of Laura's post). It ends TOMORROW.