From Pencil to Publication: Book Creation at SCS

Ms. Fraser’s Grade 5 and 6 class at Strathclair Community School has been working diligently to develop their writing skills, undertaking the project of creating short stories.  Many students have now published their digital books with text and illustrations using Book Creator.  You can see their work showcased here in our PWSD Library:  https://read.bookcreator.com/library/-Ma-CVa4E0FsnEgnHer1

When I visited this class recently, the class shared the steps they’ve taken to create their work and it was evident that they’ve invested much time and energy in this writing project!  

Ms. Fraser provided a comprehensive planning guide to help students with the writing process.  Students used Ms. Fraser’s template to brainstorm and plan their title, setting, characters, problem, events/action in the story, resolution and conclusion.  Next, they drafted each section of the story including a beginning that introduces the setting and character(s), description of the key events in the story, a conclusion etc.   Students drafted each section of their story with paper and pencil before incorporating technology for the final publications.   

After drafting their stories, students created their books using Book Creator.  Authors added text and images, which could include hand-drawn illustrations or images sourced from the internet.  Students also recorded their voices to add narration for an audiobook version of their story.  

The Grade 5 and 6 class has shared their work with staff and students at their school and I’m excited that many of them gave me the opportunity to share their work online too! Choosing to publish their work led to some good conversations about online privacy and sharing. We explained that students who wished to publish would need to have completed PWSD permission forms for sharing work online. (This is part of our division's registration package that goes home each year for families or guardians to sign and is kept on record at the school office so we can check before sharing student work.). We also had a discussion about how much personal information students wanted to share in their published books: Did they want their full name listed as author or just a first name? Did they want to include their photo in the about the author section or not? Was it a good idea to include their full birthdate when sharing online? I think having these conversations in context is one of the best ways to help our students develop digital citizenship skills and online safety. Students chose to revise their books if they wanted to adjust how much they were sharing before I published them.

Storytelling & Coding with Scratch Jr.

As a technology coach and former Grade 1 teacher, I’ve got a few longtime favourite coding apps for young students and the Scratch Jr. app is definitely one of them!  I appreciate that Scratch Jr. offers students the opportunity to learn basic programming while also embracing storytelling.  

Ms. Blair’s Grade 3 & 4 class at Strathclair School has been working on developing coding skills through unplugged activities and programming in Kodable. This class has learned about sequencing, loops, conditions and functions as they complete the coding challenges in Kodable and learn to code the Wonder Workshop Dash robots, so they brought lots of prior knowledge into this activity.

When I visited their class recently, I introduced students to the Scratch Jr. app and then they tried some of the coding activities from the teacher resources on the Scratch Jr. website https://www.scratchjr.org/teach/activities

For our next session, I explained to students that we’d be using our skills in summarizing, sequencing and retelling to write a program that retold a story.  We read “Up, Up, Down” by Robert Munsch.  Pairs of students used a graphic organizer to identify important story elements for the beginning, middle and end of the story.  Learners identified key events, settings, characters and phrases. 

Next, I asked students to use the Scratch Jr. app to program their retelling in 3-4 scenes/slides.  They were asked to include the important characters, events, settings and phrases from the beginning, middle and end of the story. The Scratch Jr. app works so well for this type of learning activity because it offers different characters and settings to choose from and customize.  Learners used the block-based coding to add actions to the story.  They added text or speech bubbles to share important phrases that came from the story.  

Supporting Storytelling with Tech Infusion at BES

What happens when you mix a great book with a little bit of technology? You get a classroom full of empowered storytellers! The students at BES have been using technology to share their voices while building important literacy skills. Check out how these storytelling projects allow even our youngest learners to become published authors and digital narrators.

The Grade 3s at BES read "You Hold Me Up" by Monique Gray Smith and used the story as inspiration for writing their own book about showing kindness and supporting others.  Students brainstormed ideas together as a class and then each created their own page for the book.  We used the Book Creator app to put together our pages and some students also added their voice recording.  

The Kindergarten class at BES used technology to support their storytelling as well.   The Kindergarten’s read The Mitten by Jan Brett.  Then, we challenged them to retell the story by sharing a comment/phrase each character/animal might say.  This can be tricky for young learners as they have to shift to taking the character’s perspective, rather than just retelling the events of the story.  This capable group of Kindergartens was up to the task and had fun writing a script of what each character/animal might say.  

BES Kindergarten script for the characters from The Mitten

Next, we used the ChatterPix Kid app to record their lines from the script and make it look like each character was talking.   We used animal images sourced from Pixabay.  Check out the fun retelling video below:

Projects shared with permission.