Seaford second-grade students read, record and recommend

Need a good book to read? Just ask second graders in Katharine Black’s class at Seaford Harbor Elementary School, as they have been working on digital book recommendations.

Students have access to a wide variety of literature from their independent reading books in school to their own books at home to the Epic! and Kids A-Z digital libraries, which they access from iPads. Black provides each child with a bag of books on his or her reading level from her classroom library. For the book reviews, students were asked to pick a realistic fiction story they enjoyed.

“Hearing it from a classmate that book is exciting is really motivating,” she said. Black created a small recording booth in her classroom with an iPad so students could make their book recommendations using Flipgrid. They were asked to discuss such topics as the characters and lessons of their chosen books. Students could then access all of the completed videos from the iPads to get ideas for something to read next.

—Brian Stieglitz