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Skill up with Sora! A month-by-month plan to boost student engagement
Do your students claim to prefer physical books to ebooks? Are they reluctant to try using a phone or tablet to read books for fun? Mastering digital reading skills and learning how to interact with digital text is imperative for students to succeed in higher education.
Most college textbooks have transitioned to ebook format, and standardized tests like the PSAT, SAT, and AP exams are now fully or partially digital, requiring students to have strong comprehension skills when reading digital passages.
If you’re struggling to generate student interest in ebooks, it may be because they just don’t know how to use the Sora app to their advantage.
Enter Stephanie Goh, EdS, the District Library Content Leader from Ferguson-Florissant School District in Missouri. Stephanie studied the effects of explicit-ebook instruction on students.
She found that spending time teaching specific Sora skills and providing time for her students to practice and hone those skills had a significant impact on how comfortable they were when selecting ebooks, reading for pleasure and interacting with ebooks to fit their preferences or needs.
A month-by-month guide to teaching Sora skills
Below, you’ll find a month-by-month instructional guide of progressive Sora skills to teach students, activities for how to teach them, and suggestions for how students can practice these skills throughout the month.
From basics to personalization: Build digital reading confidence
These skills begin with the basics, like browsing and borrowing books, and then progress to Sora features that help students customize their own reading experience to fit their preferences. Using the “I do, we do, you do” method, teachers begin with a demonstration.
Next, students think through and execute tasks with a partner.
Finally, students get time to practice and master the skill on their own. Allowing ample time for the students to practice the skills they learn is important in helping them gain confidence.
Don’t leave students (or parents) behind
Stephanie’s research stresses that teachers must teach the students how to access and use ebooks if they want them to become comfortable with the technology.
She found that students cannot be left alone to figure out how to use ebooks as this could cause frustration abandonment of the tech altogether. It’s also important to teach parents how to use ebooks so they can better support their child at home.
By providing both students and parents with the necessary guidance and support, educators can help ensure that ebook technology becomes a valuable and accessible tool for learning, rather than a source of confusion or discouragement.
Adaptable activities for all ages
We hope this schedule of activities will help you help the students and families of your district become familiar with how Sora can be customized to fit each student’s preferences – something that can’t be accomplished with physical books.
The activities in this calendar target elementary students but can be adapted for middle and high school.
Get the printable calendar and more: Download the Sora Skills kit
Ready to get started? Download the kit linked below (.zip file), which includes the calendar of tips plus helpful training resources.