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!!!
