Teletherapy: Using a Document Camera Part 3

In Using a Document Camera Part 1, the focus was on how to incorporate a document camera to share materials, typically used in face-to-face therapy, for telepractice sessions. In Using a Document Camera Part 2, the emphasis was on ways to use books to engage students. In Part 3 of this series, incorporating books is a continued theme.  Do any of your students have goals related to producing grammatically correct compound or complex sentences to describe characters and events, respond to questions, or compose questions? Using a document camera to engage the student in a virtual book pass is a low cost high-yield activity with the potential to address all of these goals and more. In brick and mortar schools, a book pass in a classroom might look like stacks or tubs of books placed among the students. The student can choose books from the tub, look them over, then decide if they want to add it to their "Books I Want to Read" list. After a few minutes the book is passed on to another student to examine. The most effective book passes I have participated in are followed with a class discussion about what books the kids found the most interesting and exciting or having the students share their lists and explain why they added particular books.  Picture in your mind the local children's librarian coming to a classroom and sharing tantalizing snippets of books available for check-out. Classroom teachers sometimes refer to this as giving a book a "book blessing". Kids, and adults for that matter, tend to gravitate to books shared in this way.  Here is one way to emulate the benefits of a book pass experience while using a document camera in telepractice sessions:

1. Keeping the age, grade level, and interests of the student in mind, collect a set of 3 or more books. Put the books in a stack under the document camera. Then one at a time, look at the front cover, back cover, or blurbs written on the book jacket, and open the book to a page. I prefer to plan the pages I want to share ahead of time and mark them with a sticky note. Use any of the following questions and/or think aloud while examining each book:

I wonder what this is about?

Do you think this is a story/narrative or informational/expository text? How do you know?

What do you notice on the cover?

Tell the student, "Pretend you know what the book is about. What do you think?"

How does the outside of the book help you predict what might be on the inside?

Do you think the book has characters? How do you know?

I wonder where the story takes place?

2. Create a list or chart of books that the student is interested in reading.  Model filling out the chart under the document camera or create a google document that you can share on your screen. Either way, the SLP can maintain a running list of the child’s interests and create a wealth of opportunities for the student to respond to and ask a variety of questions using an authentic academic task that supports them in their general curriculum and literacy development. 

A virtual book pass is a simple activity with the potential for extensions that can be maintained throughout a school year. Students are provided with choice within choice and their thinking and opinions are valued. As the SLP, you are also modeling rich language interactions for the parents. Further, this is another opportunity to gather books from the local library  to use as “free” materials.