More Than a Digital Story: It's a Literacy Project

Reading and Writing are one of my favorite things to teach and explore with my students.  In addition, reading and writing are a combined passion for many of my students this year.  I often read books throughout the year that naturally relate to writing.  So when I read Mary Had a Little Lamp, by Jack Lechner, for a class read aloud,  I knew a creating class book would be a great extension activity.  The book ended with, "Now Mary has a toaster," so our class book became Mary Had a Little Toaster.
  

From    to  

Since being introduced to digital storytelling in my Integrating Technology course, I decided that this class book was going to become our very first digital story.  After learning about and experimenting with VoiceThread in my graduate class, I decided it would be a great program to introduce to the young learners in my kindergarten class. However, before we could dive into VoiceThread, there were a few other steps we needed to take first.

Step 1:  Briefly revisit read aloud from previous session.
Step 2:  Brainstorm places Mary could bring her toaster and chart on chart     
            paper.  This list served as a resource for the children to utilize during
            their independent work session.
Step 3:  Class Vote - Since we were making a class book, we decided it would 
            be important for Mary to look similar on everyone's page.  We decided             that if we all drew her with the same color hair she would look        
            similar.  We took a vote and decided Mary would have blond hair.

Step 4:  Draw - The children turned and talked about where they would have               Mary take her toaster.  Then they were off to their tables and                       drawing.  When children finished early, I challenged them to think    
            about what Mary would have next and draw about it.  We later voted 
            on their item for the last page of our story.

Step 5:  Write - Each child wrote a sentence or two on the back of their        
            picture that would be narrated in our digital story.

Composing our digital story was fairly easy.  After the children shared their work, we compiled them into an order that made sense by sorting the pictures based on the setting.  I photographed and uploaded their illustrations             in VoiceThread.  VoiceThread allows you to upload more than one photo at a time so I was able to do it with one quick click and a few minutes of patience.  Finally, each child narrated the sentence for their illustrations.  The children were very proud of their work, and enthusiastic about creating a digital story.  Their work could have simply been turned into a class book that was bound together and sat on the shelf for the kids to read.  VoiceThread gave the students an opportunity to expand their knowledge of writing stories.  Now their classbook can be read over and over outside of our classroom since it has been shared with their families.  After a literacy rich project, this is our final product.

I recommend VoiceThread to anyone that wants to expand the literacy instruction children receive in the classroom.  It is an easy to navigate application that can be integrated in the classroom to make class books or to develop digital stories for instruction.  If you are interested in using VoiceThread, check out this tutorial and follow the links below to other literacy creations using VoiceThread.

Miss Kramer's Poetry Presentation

Miss Czelazewicz's Pre-Kindergarten Memories

Miss Larson's Kindergarten Digital Story

Miss Moore's Classroom Expectations and Rules Digital Story

Miss. Peace's Class Book Reviews

Mary's Final Digital Story

After much hard work and excitement, the children and I finished our digital story.  Once we got passed the technical malfunctions with the computer microphone, the children did a great job narrating their sentences.  They were intrigued by the idea that the computer could record their voice and instantly play it back to them.  They were engaged and motivated to do their best.  It was fairly easy to record the children, and immediately re-record them if they were not loud enough.  The red record bar that showed up helped the children know when to start talking.  We were inspired by Miss Larson's digital story and decided to make a title page.  It took us a few tries to get the title just right, but it was a lot of fun.  

Mary Had a Digital Story

Digital storytelling is a new aspect of writing stories for my students.  The children in my class love watching digital stories.  So it seemed like a natural addition to the student learning in my classroom.  We recently read the book, Mary Had a Little Lamp, by Jack Lechner.

  

It is a cute spin on the traditional nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb.  The story ends with, "Now Mary has a toaster."  The children were excited to brainstorm where Mary would bring her toaster.  After creating a list of ideas, each child illustrated a page for the story.  Here is an initial draft of our digital story...

I created this digital story using VoiceThread.  VoiceThread is a quick and easy way to use images, text, or voice to share videos with others.  It can be used with children of all ages or amongst adults.  I simply uploaded photos of my student's work.  After a couple of clicks, all of the photos were uploaded.  Most of the photos uploaded in the proper order for the digital story, but I easily dragged the other photos around on the storyboard to change some of them.  Then my students' and I prepared to record comments.  Low and behold the technology went on the fritz!  I'm not quite sure which set it in motion; the server or the microphone on the laptop.  Nonetheless I restarted the computer and hoped for the best.  I was able to have a couple children record comments, but this is all I have so far.  So stay tuned for the tales of Mary and her toaster!

F.Y.I.:  If you are interested in creating your own VoiceThread check out thess tutorials.