Find out how Cincinnati Public Schools' Student Services team uses Book Creator to transform access for their diverse student population.

Cincinnati Public Schools: Partner Spotlight

I love Book Creator because it helps my typing skills.

Do you like adding videos to Book Creator?

I really enjoy going into your books and commenting.

Book Creator 'Student Ambassador' Demetrius interviews a few of Ms. Linn's students to find out what they like about Book Creator.

Phonemic based spelling and sight words (red words) practice Kerry created a set of resources for her students that support daily lessons following Wilson’s Fundations curriculum. As you’ll see in the books, she has recorded her own voice to mimic how she would support students in a group or individually. With these books, students can do independent practice with fingerspelling, their voices and whiteboards, while they listen and watch her as many times as they like.

Finger Spelling Practice

Red Word Practice

Team Gecko created a special Christmas book together, inspired by the survival book Writer’s Workshop. They developed the characters and the story line and utilized key vocabulary words. They incorporated videos, images and illustrations, and students narrated the story.

Team Mistletoe Saves Christmas

Check out this book where Team Gecko created a Christmas survival story.

"They get so much choice... and they're choosing what's gonna be easiest for them. Like they're almost differentiating for themselves."

- Kristi Linn Intervention Specialist

This gives them a way to build knowledge and share their thoughts... while they're building skills.

Kerry Ginn Intervention Specialist

End of year testing Kerry set up a book to support the students in practicing each area of testing, including MAP, fluency and words per minute and math skills. She used Book Creator to give them a visual representation of all the resources they could choose from, both digital and in class, and motivated them with stars.

SPRING TRAINING

"Every kid has the opportunity to participate."

- Jenifer Ambrosius Curriculum Access Team Intervention Specialist

Kristi and Jenifer set up a daily collaboration between high school students and elementary students in Kristi’s special needs group to improve purpose and motivation in a daily writing exercise. The highschoolers interviewed the younger students to find out what they were interested in, and each day they provide a prompt for a short piece of writing.

Quickwrites February

Daily Quickwrites February

Collaborative Image Hunt Students work together on an image hunt for word groups such as ‘ir’ words’. They love to search for images with Book Creator’s safe search, so this was a great way to reinforce their skills.

Image Hunters

Dolphin Read Aloud Practice

Personalized “Choose your own adventure” books provide students an opportunity to do an audio recording of themselves reading passages and keywords.

Reading and listening comprehension By bringing videos and passages from PBS and other curriculum resources into Book Creator, students can make use of the accessibility features in Book Creator to demonstrate their comprehension skills in ways they wouldn’t be able to with paper and pencil.

Lizard Summary Station

Night Bloomer Summary Station

Hear from intervention specialists Jenifer Ambrosius and Kristi Linn about how Book Creator's multimodal features enable students with special needs to access the curriculum, get creative and demonstrate their learning.

"The fact that they are more engaged - that has to be having an impact. And the fact that I'm differentiating what I'm having them do based on what their needs are. I think that giving them ownership through the Book Creator tool is having an impact. They're doing really well.”

- Kerry Ginn Intervention Specialist

“It differentiates for you. I don't have to think about how to differentiate student responses, because there's a whole list of tools right there in front of me and they can choose whichever one is most comfortable for them.”

- Jenifer Ambrosius Curriculum Access Team Intervention Specialist

I'm doing end of year benchmarking and I'm blown away!

Book Creator was purchased by the Department of Student Services, but the Book Creator team opened up access district-wide so that every teacher could have premium features. Many teachers are now using Book Creator, across all subjects and grades. A few examples are below.

Conserving A Species

2020 - 2021 Sands Montessori Cookbook

A Christmas Journey

Collaborative Cookbook Physical Education

A good example of curriculum access is how Ms. Ginn supports her students doing writer’s workshops in their general education classes. Because many of them have language processing disabilities, they benefit from the scaffolding provided by image-based idea generators created in Book Creator, and they get their thoughts out using audio in the first instance. Check out the template and some student samples in <a href="https://read.bookcreator.com/library/-N1xVv-Z1B5hr45Bz99G">this library</a>.

https://api.bookcreator.com/users/v2/HS3UqgGKBHRVTAUg2hZkqdh2po83/books/Y2nfDE-2RhaMbyehVazmiA/assets/kN4oa0W-TLOTB_XbBP1tiA.png?width=1080&height=1080

Thank you CPS for sharing your special story with us!

Jenifer Ambrosius tells us about a student with a mental health diagnosis who used Book Creator as his calm down tool. Today, he's one of her 'Book Creator Ambassadors'.

Intervention Specialist Kristi Linn tells us about two students whose learning experiences were transformed by Book Creator. One student was losing their vision, and another learned positive behavior by watching himself practice it.

Cincinnati Public Schools

Cincinnati Public Schools is a large and diverse school district based in Cincinnati, Ohio, comprising 60 schools, with 35k students and 2200 teachers. The Department of Student Services purchased Book Creator to improve access to learning for students with a variety of individual needs. The Department offers a continuum of services for their diverse learner populations.&nbsp;These include specialized classrooms for students with Multiple Disabilities and Autism, students with social emotional learning needs, programs for SLIFE/newcomer students, resource rooms and inclusion services within core instruction.&nbsp;

https://api.bookcreator.com/users/v2/HS3UqgGKBHRVTAUg2hZkqdh2po83/books/Y2nfDE-2RhaMbyehVazmiA/assets/0eRcBinQS92Zih_Nc1RiJA.png?width=457&height=426

In addition to using Book Creator across the curriculum to support students, the Curriculum Access Team uses Book Creator to create guides and manuals for their staff.

An overview of the tools for the Curriculum Access Team Manual to accommodations most used at CPS Training book for new team members

Ohio Accessibility Manual Condensed Version

CAT Tools Presentation

Welcome to the LPDC

Team Gecko Loves Rainbow Books

Ms. Ginn's students created this book to share what they love about Book Creator.

"I have a group of kids who hate writing, so this has been a godsend for them to get more creative with getting thoughts out instead of just pencil and paper."

Kristi Linn, Intervention Specialist

Improving Student Access with Book Creator

Cincinnati Public Schools staff and teachers took time to tell us what they love about Book Creator, how it's being used daily by teachers and students across the district, and why it's so impactful. Click on a speech bubble to dive in to a particular topic, or move on to the next page to enjoy all their inspiring stories! Click on the Home icon in the bottom right to return to this page.

<a href="bookcreator://page/SlXbCUBNRt2J3u1uDFvVZg">Access to Curriculum</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/UYgvr3UnQ6uItEonIlR4Ug">Impact</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/3Xbz5og4SSWuUFVtjSZU2g">Daily Skills Development</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/VdY7ldEBROuHn4k3KEBb3g">Differentiation made easy</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/qv68QxaEQgyyPHysc2ficQ">Student Voices</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/pgYXEDZYTzWqP6XQrrN-Wg">Multi-Purpose</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/moFpOsIBRbidXtW2ljLJ8w">Inspiring Stories</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/IYU0FTTcQwO_KJn7CBLHew">Collaboration</a>

<a href="bookcreator://page/UP7rgwtwSIKXSRT99p9WCA">Student Agency &amp; Motivation</a>