DST FINAL TASK! MODULE 5

May 31

I am already working in the Digital Storytelling final task with my 2nd grade students! I chose to work with my smallest group because I don't think the working procedure is suitable for large groups with up to 28 students!

The basic steps are:

1. Let's create a story! Contrary to my previous experiences, I didn't give the children a single clue about the story to make. They could choose the characters and the plot, and they should discuss all this among themselves, without my intervention. They were allowed to mix their native language and English in their conversations and their notes.

Here they are discussing the details of the story and taking some notes.

2. Let's make a mind map with our ideas. Here the help of the teacher is crucial. You can see the mindmap in the photograph as well as the children writing the story together. 

Well a session was certainly not enough...luckily I chose not to work with a large group. We'll arrange to meet in the following days during the recess time...The kids are really engaged and mad about the process and they say they want to act their story before the class, "with the detective puppies in policemen suits"! OMG!

June 6

3. Let's show our idea to the rest of the class

We have been working on this project for some days. My DST course finishes today and I'm afraid I still won't be able to show full results now. Anyway, let's see what they have, hoping we will be able to update this post soon.

We have rehearsed the play a couple of times; I helped the little actors express themselves in English. They made the masks in their free time (but no policepuppy suits) and the next step will be acting the play before the whole class. They are still not ready for this, so what I'm showing here is the rehearsing, which was before the class already. I thought maybe this would cause a mess, but on the contrary, the other children liked the idea very much and now most of them want to make their own play...Great!

So, the next steps (which I'm not able to post yet) will be:

4. Acting of the play.

5, Assessing the activity. 

I am going to use Kahoot! to assess the activity. Since this final task is "in construction", I cannot post the results of it yet, so by now I'm posting just the 5 questions of the quiz. They are intentionally very simple, due to the grade they are meant for.

Currently, my 2nd grade students are not familiar with Kahoot! and do not have personal laptops in their classroom. So I'm going to use  Kahoot! in a slightly different way. I will show the Kahoot! in class but they are going to write the answers on paper. They will be different color stickers for the answers and they will simply have to circle the right sticker.

 I expect I will someday be able to apply this procedure to larger classes, working in small groups, but I'm still not very skilled at cooperative teaching/learning.

MODULE 4 COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING

Here is my first experience with collaborative storytelling! I was inspired by the well-known "Choose Your Own Story" method (those old books!) and so I created a video to guide my 2nd grade students along the path. They were asked to  make choices about the character of the story (an animal), its features and what happens to it.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ACTIVITY:

1.The students must create a story in a collaborative way by choosing amongst some items shown to them on a video:
 -What kind of animal is the main character
-Its features
-What happens to it (a "problem")
-Who helps
-How the story ends

2. Each students will produce a drawn, written and/or oral work based on the common story.

PROCEDURE:

1. Tell the class they are going to create a story and that they must watch a video as a previous task.
2. Play it once with no pauses
3. Ask them what they think they can use the video for. Help him by clarifying: they can make choices about the characteristics of the story. Insist on the fact that they should get to a common point.
4. Play the video with a pause after every choice to make. After every pause, the students work in groups to choose what choice to make. They write their choice on a piece of paper.
5. Each piece of paper functions as a vote, and we proceed accordingly to set the final choices.
6. Then each student produces his/her own story. They can write, draw and/or tell it aloud.

THE RESULTS:
In our case, the common choice was: "A black dog has a problem: he is ill. He/She needs some help, and then a kind giraffe comes". We decided to give the story the title "The Sad Dog and the Gifaffe"
The children then produced their own "end of the story·.

The video:

 Watching the video:

Photographs of the children making their productions:

Showing / Telling our stories:

It would have been wonderful if the children had been able to produce their own stories in a digital format, but this was not possible since 2nd grade has not access to personal computers. But  I'm planning to create a digital story based on the ones they made on paper!

This is the rubric I will use to assess the activity:

MODULE 3 VIDEO STORY AND COMIC

This is my video story, based on the narration I created with Piktochart. 

This is one of the rubrics I use to assess the understanding of the story.
This particular rubric refers to vocabulary, and it can be customized with more (or less, or other words).

I prefer to use it printed, because it is necessary to cover the fourth column so that the child cannot see it until he/she is allowed to, that is, after circling his/her choice (column 2 or column 3) for all the words.

So,  this is how this rubric works:

1. Depending of age, the student will read or listen the word on the left (at this stage, column 4 is still covered. A simple post-it note can be used).

2. They will choose  one of the images provided and mark it by circling it. Column 4 covered.

3. When they have finished circling, they can uncover the solution an

And this is my first and only (by now) digital comic.

I created the video with WeVideo using my previous Piktochart Materials. I am pretty well acquainted with this app and use it at least once a week to create videos from other videos and/or photos. It is really my preferred app regarding video editing. It allows you to add music, voice, text, smileys and so much more.

For the comic I used Comic Page Creator. Being my first time with comics, it was not so easy: lots of character/gesture/posture/clothes combinations and you have to make it sure not to "lose track" of the character you just created because you will need to insert it again an again with the same characteristics.

MODULE 2

1)This is my first Prezi! Just a very simple story intended for first graders.

 The presentation has no sound itself, it is meant to be used with the teacher leading the narration eliciting responses from the little ones. Some parts are intentionally set in "discrete" letter font, because children are not supposed to pay attention to them. They are simply questions or comments the teacher will make.

 The other "bigger" parts must be at least "seen" (if not read) by the pupils, this way they can start globally recognising some key, easy words such as Yes and so on.

 If the link doesn't work, please copy and paste it to your browser.


 https://prezi.com/view/lOcQBq66pvSm5oGPN4ZZ/


 2)Here is my Piktochart story.

https://create.piktochart.com/output/30195901-new-piktochart

It is a story for little students.

A padlet to introduce The English Armadillo

COPY