Books, Creative Thinking, Education, K-12, Language Arts, Reading, Student Products, Websites, Writing

Storybird (Reblog)

For the summer, I have decided to use my Tuesday and Thursday posts to reblog some of my favorite posts that some of my readers may have missed the first time around:

As a teacher, do you ever have a moment when no one needs your help, and you are standing in the middle of your classroom wondering what you should be doing?  In my twenty years of teaching, I think that’s happened twice:  when I was student teaching and had no idea what I was supposed to be doing anyway, and today.  I showed my students Storybird, which allows you to choose sets of art to illustrate a story that you write.  I meant for it to be a station on some computers in my classroom, but the students who started at that station didn’t want to leave.  So, I started pulling out laptops until everyone was working on their own stories.  For over an hour, there was silence in my room, and every child was engaged in creating his or her own story.  We had been studying Figurative Language, and the assignment was to create a story with a winter theme that used at least 4 different types of figurative language.

After lunch, I thought the students might be weary of sitting in front of computer screens.  I began saying, “Okay, you have a choice.  You can either continue working on your Storybirds or – ” I didn’t even get to finish.  They unanimously agreed that they wanted to continue.

Storybird is free.  Register as a teacher, and you can add a class of students easily.  The students do not need e-mail addresses to register or log in.  You can view their work at any time, and they can also view the work of other students in the class by clicking on a tab at the top.  They can comment, as can the teacher.  It’s online, and easy to share, so they can show friends and family.  The teacher can post specific assignments or the students can just create.  Collaboration on stories is possible, and reading the stories of others is inspiring.  The art work is charming and lovely.

Education, K-12, Teaching Tools, Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Pins

I found the link for this collection of Web 2.0 pins for educators on Teach-Lou-Ology.  I think that there are several of these floating around on Pinterest, but this one caught my eye with the particular sites that are included.  Some of them have been reviewed on this blog, such as Triptico and Storybird.  Others are ones that I use regularly (Wordle, Google Docs), but I have not included on this site.  And then, there are others I would like to investigate further – such as Animaps.  The summaries of each site pinned make this page very helpful.

Education, Writing

My Favorite Online Writing Tools

Many schools are out for the next two weeks, which gives teachers the opportunity to catch up on their personal lives.  Sometimes, though, teachers like to use this time for planning.  As the number of subscribers to this blog climbs, I am aware that many of you may not have had time to read all of the posts, or might have missed some of the earlier suggestions.  So, I thought this might be a good time of year to summarize and emphasize some of the most valuable resources I have reviewed so far.  Today, I would like to offer my Favorite Online Writing Tools:

#3 – Writing Prompts – Luke Neff provides this site with wonderful writing prompts usually accompanied by thought-provoking graphics.

#2 – Read Write Think – The student interactives alone on this site make it well worth a visit.  But it is also rich with lesson planning ideas and other resources for teachers and parents.  It’s one of the many sites tied to Thinkfinity, which I featured as one of my favorite teaching tools.

#1 – Storybird – I cannot say enough good things about this site, which allows students to create stories from sets of illustrations provided on the site.  Students can comment on each other’s work, parents can view the stories online or even purchase published products of their children’s masterpieces.  I have had several students who thoroughly dislike writing suddenly plunge themselves into weaving tales on Storybird.  One of them even wrote a thank you note to me for introducing him to the site.  This is, by far, one of my favorite discoveries this year.

If you are interested in reading my original posts on each of these resources, please click on the following:  Writing Prompts, Read Write Think (part of my post on Thinkfinity), and Storybird.

K-5, Language Arts, Motivation, Student Products, Uncategorized, Web 2.0, Websites, Writing

Storybird

As a teacher, do you ever have a moment when no one needs your help, and you are standing in the middle of your classroom wondering what you should be doing?  In my twenty years of teaching, I think that’s happened twice:  when I was student teaching and had no idea what I was supposed to be doing anyway, and today.  I showed my students Storybird, which allows you to choose sets of art to illustrate a story that you write.  I meant for it to be a station on some computers in my classroom, but the students who started at that station didn’t want to leave.  So, I started pulling out laptops until everyone was working on their own stories.  For over an hour, there was silence in my room, and every child was engaged in creating his or her own story.  We had been studying Figurative Language, and the assignment was to create a story with a winter theme that used at least 4 different types of figurative language.

After lunch, I thought the students might be weary of sitting in front of computer screens.  I began saying, “Okay, you have a choice.  You can either continue working on your Storybirds or – ” I didn’t even get to finish.  They unanimously agreed that they wanted to continue.

Storybird is free.  Register as a teacher, and you can add a class of students easily.  The students do not need e-mail addresses to register or log in.  You can view their work at any time, and they can also view the work of other students in the class by clicking on a tab at the top.  They can comment, as can the teacher.  It’s online, and easy to share, so they can show friends and family.  The teacher can post specific assignments or the students can just create.  Collaboration on stories is possible, and reading the stories of others is inspiring.  The art work is charming and lovely.

Here is a sample from one of my 4th graders: (I apologize if some of the words are cut off – WordPress does not “play well” with embed codes!)
[vodpod id=Video.15699736&w=425&h=350&fv=book_slug%3Dthe-snow-is-here%26amp%3Bsize%3Dxl%26amp%3BconfigXML%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fstorybird.com%2Fstorymaker%2Fpaths%2F]