Digital learning should be engaging and fun for students in upper elementary! The following five ideas are ways to make students learn reading comprehension concepts through digital learning!
Book Projects
Students love to read novels and share the novels that they love with others. Have students read ANY novel that they want and then create a book project on it. These book projects are completely digital.
This way students can read what they want and then show you that they understand what they read in an engaging way.
I give students 20 different options for a book project and then they pick which one they want to complete. They complete it at  home and then share it with the class.
The projects include a presentation, create a board game, make a travel brochure, digital posters, and more! Check out all the projects here!
Do you want a FREE book project to assign with to your kids?! Put your email below and the “Travel Brochure” book project will be sent to your mailbox.
Story Online with Reading Response
Story Online is a GREAT way to make sure that students are reading quality books and working on their comprehension with the book. I assign a book and then I give students a writing prompt or a digital comprehension organizer to go with it. (Find those graphic organizers here)
Here is an example assignment you could do this week:
Listen to “The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake” on Storyonline.Â
Then, write me a summary of how they found the missing carrot cake. When you are done complete the “visionary and illustrator” assignment on Google Classroom.
Bonus: They have teaching guides and parent guides to go with each book. This way you have an entire lesson to use in your classroom or the parents have an entire lesson they can use at home!
Digital Novel Studies
I LOVE to read a good novel in my classroom and I love to see how students can extend their thinking when it comes to a novel. One great way is through a digital novel study.
We read the book together. If this was done at home students could order the book and read it at home, listen to it on Audible, or you could record yourself reading the book and they could listen to you!
Every chapter we will do a comprehension sheet to go with the skill I want them to work on with that chapter. Each chapter we focus on a different skill. I assign these all on Google Classroom digitally.
Then, every three or four chapters we will do a book project. You could save these all until the end too! These are engaging projects that relate to the book and are all digital.
We take quizzes throughout on Google Forms to check for their understanding and a final test at the end!
This is a great way to get students engaging in a novel without having to copy a bunch of papers! It is low-prep, engaging, and rigorous!
I do this for Lemonade War, Shiloh, Stone Fox, and Because of Winn-Dixie!
Readworks.org
This is a great site for FREE reading comprehension!
There is tons of nonfiction, paired passages, and fiction work! You can assign the close reading to the students digitally or print it.
There is also an option for the passages to be read to the students for your lower readers!
There are questions that go with each set of passages to work on comprehension!
Research Presentations
This is one of my favorite things to assign students because I really get to see how they are creative.
I simply send students to National Geographic Kids and have them choose any animal. I tell them to go to Google Slides and create a presentation on the animal of their choice.
They love the open endedness of this and get super creative. I have seen some AMAZING presentations come out of a simple assignment.
You can really do this with anything you want them to research. Presidents, animals, weather, and more. Don’t overthink it! Sometimes just allowing them to do their own research and be creative is all you need.
Do you want more assignment ideas for digital learning?! Check out this blog post for more ideas!
Hannah Wilde
I am so glad you’re here! I love helping 3rd-5th grade teachers by providing ideas, engaging resources, and professional development they need. I am a literacy coach who is here to help lessen the workload for teachers while making them more confident! I want students to be continually engaged in a rigorous environment!