Simple tool to support Foreign language teaching
Community Review for Book Creator
My Take
I personally like neat presentations, I want the projects my students work on to be showcased in an attractive, engaging, and dynamic way, and I found in Book creator a perfect tool, very simple and intuitive, to reach my expectations. It allows my students to gather in a unique book everything they have learned on a specific topic, to see other students' creations, to hear their own voices, and share their class projects with their families. They are excited about the technology, learn transversal skills, are engaged individually or collectively, I can leave individual feedback on the side so that they could self-correct or improve their writing, and the tool is constantly evolving to respond to teachers and students' improvement suggestions. The cost for the premium version is a bit high to bear as individual teachers though, so you'd better have your school supporting it.
How I Use It
I teach French as a Foreign Language to kids from 5 to 11 years old in an international school and discovered Book creator during the first lockdown in 2020. At first, I would use it as teaching material, when I wanted my students to be able to access resources for our online lessons, as well as hearing my voice to help them practice their pronunciation at home, for example when we would work on phonics. Then progressively I used it to gather all new vocabulary learned in a new topic, illustrated and pronounced by my youngest students in order to help them memorize it and make them their own. Finally, I started to engage my students in some creative writing activities that they would write, read and illustrate using Book creator tools. I also recently tried the collaborative option, that my students immediately enjoyed and used to create beautiful common projects. Sharing the final book created together reinforces the community spirit, pride about the student's own work creation, is sharable with the whole family and is a beautiful memory of our school year. It is true though that my 5 years old students use more basic functionalities, but since I teach them every year until they finish elementary school, I see a real progression in their autonomy to use it, in the first years as a book provided by me to showcase their work, then slowly making them their own over the years and even teaching me some good tricks in the last years.