Every year we try new ways to help our Momentous School students continue to read at home over the summer. We’ve sent home journals, we’ve asked students to bring a report on the first week, we’ve had them write letters to the main character of a book, sing a song about their book and more. Every student is encouraged to participate in summer reading, and we promote it with the students at the end of the school year as well as with their parents. This year I thought I’d try something new and incorporate technology into summer reading.

I found a website called Flipgrid, where students can contribute short videos about anything they want. I made a page just for our school, taught each class of students how to do it, and helped parents download the app to their phone or visit the website on a computer.

On the home page of our school’s account, I listed this prompt in both English and Spanish: What book have you read lately? What is the book about? What did you like about the book?

So far, about 30 days into summer vacation, we have 67 video submissions. Some students have made several and others just one. You can also see how many views each video gets, and I’m noticing that lots of students are viewing them.

Each video is 90 seconds long. Here are a few of my favorites so far: