Sensationally Savvy Advice- Digital Story “First-Draft”

I was having trouble deciding what kind of digital story I could possibly do being that it is the end of the school year! But I then remembered how November from our class text explained that we don’t have to see the use of technology as an add-on and that we can incorporate it into anything that we do! So as I began looking over my “typical” end of the year activities it dawned on me that it would be “fun” to incorporate students “voices” into their typical letters of advice to the upcoming second grade students. In connection to the CCSS for second grade students have been working on letter writing throughout the course of the school year. Students have had pen-pals, they write letters to the Celebrity of the Week every Thursday, and have written letters to each other recommending books to read. So, I decided to have students write their typical second grade advice letter but then had them chose a sentence or two to highlight to record.

Early on in the year I introduced my students to a song to teach them the parts of a friendly letter. It has been very effective I even sometimes hear them humming it just for fun. Listen to them sing the song!

After viewing many different digital stories on various blogs I decided I wanted to explore using iMovie for my digital story. My students all drew pictures for what would become the “title page” of our digital story and then students voted on the best one to be inputted into the story. Together students brainstormed ideas of what they could say to introduce the digital story and then students “auditioned” for the part to do the introduction. Students then wrote their letter demonstrating the appropriate friendly letter format. Finally students brainstormed ideas for the closing of the story, students “auditioned”, and one student memorized the closing and ended our story. When viewing the movie I thought it was missing a little “something” so I went back and added in my advice to my upcoming students and some “happy” music! Here it is…

Hope you enjoyed my digital story. I look forward to using this digital story on the first day of school year for my upcoming second grade students (I predict this might even get students excited and curious about other ways we might use technology throughout the year). In addition I will also leave the hand written letters on students desks for the first day. Please let me know what you think.  Provide me with any feedback you might have. Thanks in advance for your time.

P.S-While I found iMovie a little “tricky” to use because of it being difficult to merge still images and videos, I feel like the more I play with the program the easier it may become. I plan to play around with it this summer. My son is always doing something that would be fun to capture. Look for an upcoming iMovie soon!!!