With Bounce, teachers can provide instruction designed to help students develop the following skills with informational text — required by the Common Core Standards:
- Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
- Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
- Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
- Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
On the Bounce website, there’s a space for you to paste/type in a webpage address. Click on “Grab Screenshot,” wait a few seconds, and you’ll be taken to a page containing the screenshot of your webpage.
As you move your mouse across the page, you’ll notice that it’s a crosshair and not the arrow that you’re used to seeing. Drag your mouse across a block of text on the page or around an image. Now you can type a question, thinking prompt, or observation about that item. In the upper right corner, click on the Save button. Right next to that you’ll see a website address that you should copy and save for future reference. Here’s an example of a page saved using Bounce.
From the SMART Notebook, you can link to the saved website address from an object on your Notebook page giving you easy access to the instructional material you’ve just created. Tap to reveal each note as needed.
Using Bounce as an instructional tool is easy but once your students have begun to develop the necessary skills they’ll need to be able to practice on their own and demonstrate their skills to you. Have your students find a site containing informational text related to a topic you’re studying then use Bounce to create a screenshot. Now they’ll have the ability to add notes to the page about their thinking, inferences and analysis of the text. They can “hand in” their work to you by sending the saved the link to you – no more paper – and you can access their work from any web-enabled device.
Have you used Bounce or any similar tools to support instruction with informational text?
