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.