Giving Silent Students a Voice through Padlet

Earlier in November, I had an outstanding opportunity to present at the Virginia Beach Reading Council Fall Conference with one of Dey's exceptional reading teachers. It had to be fate that led us together that day as we both wanted to talk to the other about ideas we wanted to try. It was exciting to hear that she was thrilled to be my co-presenter for the conference and willing to share her experiences with using digital tools to engage her students in the Language Arts classroom. We were then able to narrow down our tool of choice to Padlet and how we used it to capture the thoughts and ideas of all of her students; thus, giving those silent students a way to express their voice and ideas.

What a journey we began to prepare for the conference! Together we used Padlet to guide the students in writing summaries and determining important information versus interesting information. It was inspiring to see this teacher encourage individual student contributions to the Padlet, then move to students working with partners and talking about the ideas on the Padlet wall to stretching the conversation to small groups of students to clarify and solidify student thoughts. All in all, once this was finished, the teacher then had her students use the ideas on Padlet to write their summary papers - best papers students had ever written, she said and claimed it was because of the deep conversations students had from using their ideas recorded on Padlet! Watching this teacher's journey with her students and being her support on the side is truly the joy of being an ITS!