"Tis the Season... for #EpicPals!

Click here to access December EpicPals Google Doc

Our December #EpicPals primary and intermediate collections are ready and waiting for you. This month's primary board again includes a Read To Me Flipgrid selection! Flipgrid, coupled with a Read to Me book, is a great way to give your struggling readers the opportunity to participate in EpicPals independently! Of course, ANYONE can participate on the Flipgrid response and students don't have to use the Read to Me function for the book selection. Personalize the experience for your students how you see fit for their needs!! The Flipgrid videos are fully moderated by me so please give me a 24-48 hour turn around time to approve them. Please also talk to your students about appropriate digital citizenship when creating their videos. I understand that this venue may be new to many but if there is inappropriate language, gestures, etc, videos will be deleted. 

Also new this month is the ability for students to like other students' posts on the Padlet boards. We have turned on the new Reactions feature this month. Encourage your students to read others' posts and if they like their post, have them click on the heart at the bottom of the sticky note. This is a fantastic way to lead students toward commenting- start with being reflective and having an authentic reason to like something so they can then move forward to explaining. 

We also encourage you to have conversations with your students on what constitutes a good post and how to be a good digital citizen when working online. You can find several resources to help you with these conversations on this previous blog post. My hope is to add the comment feature to our Padlets at some point this year as students' reading, writing, and reflective skills improve. More on that in the near future.

Without further ado, here is the link for December's EpicPals Google Doc with this month's books and QR codes/links to the Flipgrid and Padlet boards.

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If you ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can find both of us on Twitter- @smalchow (primary boards) and @bhopteacher (intermediate boards)

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New to EpicPals and need some additional information? If so, head on over the the #EpicPals page at the top of the blog for additional information.