Student Authors

As the end of the year is upon us, I have decided to give my students an opportunity to use Storybird to create stories of their own. I must say, for all of the ways in which I do not like Storybird, it has sparked creativity in my students. For two hours each day this past week my students have used Storybird to create some stories of their very own. I modeled how to create a story, showed them my own digital story (a few posts back), and set them free. What I saw happen was amazing. My students were completely engaged in their stories. They were excited to share them with their peers and many students took it upon themselves to assist their friends when problems arose. I was so impressed with the stories and illustrated poems that were published this week. Take a peek at some of the stories created by student authors...

A story by Kwaku

A haiku by Emily



A diamante poem by Ray

Fables Galore!

As part of the second grade curriculum, students in my classroom participate in a unit where they study the elements of fables. Once students understand the elements of a fable, they look at examples of fables and assess each one based on the elements as well as establishing what the lesson, theme, or moral is portrayed in that text. As a culminating activity, students create their own fable with a lesson, theme, or moral of their choice. In an effort to provide students with additional examples of fables, I created a digital story of a fable about a Leopard and Monkey centered around the theme of "you must work for all you get."

Next year when teaching this unit, I plan to include this digital story to show my students an additional example of a fable but also to show a way in which they can create and publish their own fables. This fable was created using Storybird which is a tool that I am still new to. In a previous post I shared my experience with using it for the first time. After more exploration with this tool and allowing my students some time to explore, I must say that I can better see the positives and abilities of this program. While there are still limitations to Storybird, I must say that the pros outweigh the cons and I plan to use this website more often with my students.




Please note that this just a rough draft of my digital story. If you have any ideas for changes or improvements to the story and/or ways in which this can be integrated into the curriculum, please comment and share them below.

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Update:

I have since used this fable in my classroom to introduce Storybird to my students and I have found that the students LOVED that I wrote this story and that they can become authors themselves using this online tool. Some other ways in which I believe educators can use Storybird in their classroom are:

- Educators can create assignments and grade using the program
- Educators can create a library on Storybird which students can access and see everyone's stories
- Teach a lesson on details by having students describe the images provided in the galleries
- Teach a lesson on expanding sentences using the details of the images.
- Use it for prewriting or organizing
- Teachers can use it to work on emergent reading skills with young readers
- Have students collaborate to create a story as a group
- Have students free write using the images to create a story

There are so many ways in which educators can use Storybird in their classrooms! How would you use Storybird with your students?

Success with Storybird

In class tonight, my colleagues and I worked together to create a picture book using an online tool for creating and reading books. This website was entirely new to me. The great part about this website is that there is a vast amount of artwork to use to create your story with. My classmates and I searched for artwork that was student-friendly and easily-lended itself to a picture book story. One part that I did not like was that when selecting artwork you were limited to one specific artist's gallery. This made for a sometimes small gallery and images that did not always work well together to create a story. None the less, we found an artist who had a series of images with a theme around one character. So together we created this story... Susie Goes Exploring. Our plan is to use this picture book in our classrooms when teaching inferences. The story is about a young girl who uses her imagination to go exploring. The students are then prompted at the end to infer where Susie is during all of her explorations which is ultimately at her house using her imagination. Take a peek and let me know what you think!