Winning Writing Apps

For quite some time, I have been looking for an app to help my students practice their handwriting skills to help them when writing independently. While I have come across many apps, Writing Wizard is one of my favorites. 

This app is for the iPads and tablets, and helps guides students to write using the correct uppercase and lowercase letters, relating to the Standard:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.K.1.A- print many uppercase and lowercase letters.

There are arrows to show students where exactly to write, and when the students stray from the letter, the line will not proceed and the students have to start over. The different color rainbow lines are very appealing to my Kindergarten students. Also, this app offers sight words, CVC words, and allows individual word lists that the student or teacher can create! Therefore, when using this app, I can differentiate for each student. We have a few students who need extra assistance with their fine motor skills, and the students are more apt to use the iPad, compared to a simple pencil and paper.

Hutchinson and Colwell comment on the aid of digital tools to assist students, specifically as a tool for students who may have motor or cognitive development delays. The authors note that when the students are able to see the word actually written by their own hand, the students will be able to comprehend that word more in written form.

Although, Hutchinson and Colwell comment that before students are even able to write, students should be able to understand oral words can become written words. Typically, students retell students orally as a narrative. With apps such as Dragon Dictation, students can now watch their oral words transform into written words. Then, students are able to create stories independently.

The standard that relates to this is:

CCSS.ELA.W.2

2. Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

Students will be able to create pictures through other websites and apps, such as Story Creator, and then add text through Dragon Dictation.

Reference:

Hutchinson A. & Colwell J. (2015). Bridging technology and literacy.

The Missing Print Mystery

Using a variety of tools, my digital literacy story is coming together. My digital story is created specifically for a few Kindergarteners in my class who are having difficulty remembering the concepts about print. I would use this book in the future in my career to teach concepts about print.

This book correlates with the following CCSS standards:

CCSS.RF.K.1-1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

a. Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.

b. Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

c. Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.

                 and

CCSS.RF.1.1-1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

a. Recognize the distinguishing features

The idea of the story is that the main character of the book (a book) is trying to locate some elements of his story that went missing.  The story entails finding an author, illustrator, and editor to fix the main characters book.  Several features of a book are pointed out. The title, author, and illustrator are shown on the cover and title page. Then, the spine and back cover are shown with appropriate features. The print in the book is fixed, going from left to right, adding spaces between words, using capitalization, and punctuation. After the book is fixed, the editor checks out the book for errors, specifically pointing out the concepts about print that were fixed with color coded graphic symbols and labels.

As the ISTE standards for educators note, it is important to create learning experiences that are differentiated. The following ISTE standard strongly correlates with my digital story:

ISTE.5.A.

Use technology to create, adapt and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.

To create this story, I had to use several different websites and applications to create original pictures and diagrams that will be meaningful to my students.

First, I started with the website Popplet. I explored Popplet in a previous post as a brainstorming tool. I applied what I learned about Popplet as brainstorming tool, creating a story outline to follow.

Then, I used the application, PicsArt. This app helped me to add text and edit clip art images to personalize my story. I could even edit the main character, the book, to have facial features that go along with my story.

After that, I needed a way to include diagrams that students would easily understand. With Skitch, I could easily annotate the book, adding color coded arrows and text.

Next, I needed a way to get all of the images together to create the story. I created a powerpoint from the images used on PicsArt, and the text used from Popplet. The story was finally coming together, but it was missing an auditory element to make it more engaging and interesting.

Finally, I uploaded the powerpoint slides to Animoto, another tool I explored in previous blogs. Then, I could add background music to the slides, to make the digital story have an audio element as well.

Here is a copy of my digital story:

One thing that I would like to change in this book is adding voice, rather than background music. I can even get students engaged in the story by having students narrate. I can use a website such as Voicethread to add narration to each page of the story.

Also, I think that the video went a little too fast between slides, and the students would not be able to read at that rate. In addition, I would like to extend the digital story even further, by providing some type of assessment at the end of the story, holding students accountable for what they learned, as well as assessing how well this digital story helped teach concepts about print. Otherwise, I am excited to share this story with my Kindergarten class and colleagues. I couldn’t find any digital stories explicitly about teaching about CAP and I think that a lot of teachers could use this story to teach about CAP in the future.

I hope you enjoy my story! Please complete the survey below to let me know your thought and opinions about my story.

Skitch, Annotating With Style

This week, I started to work on my digital storybook. My story is about a book who is trying to find his missing print concepts. I used a variety of media tools to create the images for my story such as Popplet and Animoto.

I was looking for an application that would help me to make a diagram explicitly stating the print concepts I wanted the students to learn:


CCSS.ELA.RF.K.1-1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

a. Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
b. Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.
c. Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.

and

CCSS.ELA.RF.1.1- Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
a. Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word,
capitalization, ending punctuation).



So. I came across the application Skitch!

It is easy to annotate diagrams with this application. I can add color coded arrows and labels to get my point across, and then circle the main ideas as well. This was simple for me to use as a tool in my lessons, and I can see my students using this tool with ease as well. 

Here is an example of a few of my diagrams I created to show concepts about print:

This tool helps with organizing thoughts and putting ideas into a format for students to easily understand.

Students should be engaged in simple diagrams that are easy to comprehend. Authors Cromley et. al. (2010) support this stating teachers should, "Use diagrams to supplement text to increase the likelihood of individuals engaging in deeper, meaningful processing" (As cited in McCrudden Schraw & Buckendahl, 2015, p. 33). The different arrows, symbols, and highlighted text will help students to recall the elements of the story. 

Reference:

McCrudden, M., Schraw, G., & Buckendahl, C. (Eds.). (2015). Use of visual displays in research and testing : Coding, interpreting, and reporting data (Current perspectives on cognition, learning, and instruction). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Storyboard That!

Hi there!

Last week I was explored the website Storyboard That. This website offered backgrounds, images, avatars, and speech bubbles to create a story that resembled a comic strip. I could add text under each image in the story.

Here's a picture of my story!

I can see this website being used in the classroom when addressing the following standards:

CCSS.ELA.W.1.3- Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.

CCSS.ELA.W.3.6- With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

This story would be an excellent resource for retelling stories, especially in a narrative piece. There were various opportunities to sequence the events of the story I was following, and write under each picture to describe the events. There was an opportunity to introduce the story, write about several events, and then provide closure to the story by adding an end. Students will be able to use sequencing words such as: first, then, next and the end to show they understand the sequence of events.

Also, it was simple to publish the story and save it to a PDF file. Students will be able to review their own work and others work either online or in print. By creating a work to share with others, students will be more apt to create a writing piece they will share by publishing their work. Students can learn from others work as well how to appropriately retell a story, including all of the elements of a story.

I may give website a try again in the future, I can see grades 3 and above using this tool well to rewrite stories and write their own narrative pieces.