“E-books have the potential to change the way our students read and consume text because of their interactivity and convenience,” say Heather Ruetschlin Schugar, Carol Smith, and Jordan Schugar (West Chester University) in this helpful article in The Reading Teacher, But here’s what a fourth grader said after finishing the e-book Sir Charlie Stinky Socks and the Really Big Adventure: “I have no clue what I just read.” Why? Because he was so engaged making the wiggly woos howl and the good grey mare go “clippety clop” that he wasn’t focusing on the meaning.

Clearly teachers need to proceed with caution when using e-books. Ruetschlin Schugar, Smith, and Schugar offer the following tips:

            • Familiarize students with the basics of their device. Teachers shouldn’t assume that students are savvy to all the skills necessary to get the most from an e-book. Some students need help turning the e-book or tablet on and off, accessing the necessary apps, orienting the screen, opening the e-book, turning pages, accessing interactive features, and setting expectations for how students should use the interactive features.

            • Model how to transfer skills they use when reading print. These include bookmarking, annotating, highlighting, figuring out unfamiliar words, predicting, monitoring comprehension, using a dictionary, inferring, retelling, summarizing, and identifying main ideas.

            • Beware of gimmicks. Many e-books allow students to touch pages to make sounds, move objects around, and access videos, games, and puzzles. Seductive as these features are, the authors say they don’t always enhance comprehension. They recommend that teachers judge the value of e-book bells and whistles by asking these questions:

-   Do the interactions provide support that would help the reader make a text-based inference or understand difficult vocabulary?

-   Are there more supporting and extending interactions than distracting interactions?

-   Are the interactions time-consuming, or are they relatively brief?

-   How often are interactions used?

-   Are they strategically placed to enhance motivation without distracting the reader from the meaning?

-   Are the interactions within the text, or does the reader have to go to another screen?

Here are their suggestions for high-quality interactive picture books:

For beginning readers:

-   Blue Hat, Green Hat by S. Boynton (Loud Crow)

-   Go Clifford, Go! by N. Bridwell (Scholastic, 2010)

-   Meet Biscuit by A.S. Capucilli (HarperCollins Children 2012)

-   Nickelby Swift, Kitten Catastrophe by B. Hecht (VivaBook)

-   How Rocket Learned to Read by T. Hills (Random House)

-   Miss Spider’s Tea Party by D. Kirk (Callaway Digital Arts)

-   A Fine Musician by L. Thomson (Tokeru)

For fluent readers:

-   Will and Kate: A Love Story by A. Larkum (Ink Robin)

-   Slice of Bread Goes to the Beach by G. Mellenhorst (Jelly Biscuits)

-   Who Would Win? Killer Whale vs. Great White Shark by J. Pallotta (Scholastic)

-   Wild About Books by J. Sierra (Random House)

-   The Artifacts by L. Stace and D. Hare (Happy Larry)

Even the best e-books are not perfect, and Schugar, Smith, and Schugar urge teachers to use them wisely.

            • Remember that an interactive e-book does not replace a good teacher. The key is teacher selection of e-books and teacher scaffolding of the reading experience, say the authors: “We encourage teachers to provide guided instruction with interactive picture e-books through activating students’ background knowledge before reading, prompting students to answer comprehension questions during reading, and helping students to extend their thinking about the text after reading.”

“Teaching with Interactive Picture E-Books in Grades K-6” by Heather Ruetschlin Schugar, Carol Smith, and Jordan Schugar in The Reading Teacher, May 2013 (Vol. 66, #8, p. 615-624),

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1168/abstract; the authors can be reached at

hschugar@wcupa.edu, csmith3@wcupa.edu, and jschugar@wcupa.edu. 

From the Marshall Memo #488