Sensationally Savvy Advice-Digital Story "Final Draft"

Ok, so here it is the final copy of my digital story. My students wrote letters of advice that they would give to my upcoming second grade students. The first time around I had some difficulties getting a clear picture of my digital story when using my SMARTboard. To correct this problem I tried uploading my story in 1080p format, however the Blogger program wouldn't accept it. I then tried uploading my story in 720p format and again I was unable to do so, I was again rejected by Blogger. I have concluded that the Blogger could not upload these formats because they were too large. So I settled on uploading my digital story in 1080p format to YouTube and then embedding the video into Blogger. My video quality improved greatly but the process took much longer. It took about an hour to upload to YouTube. My hope is that the video quality will improve when viewed on a larger screen, like when using my SMARTboard. 

Needless to say, the experience of creating a digital story was fun and very engaging for my students. Viewing the video gave my students a meaningful way to reflect on the school year, as well. I look forward to using the digital story in the Fall with my upcoming Second Grade Students. I believe the students will be receptive to getting some advice from their peers!

Take a look see at the "Fantastical" Second Grade Advice that my savvy students created.

P.S. Friendly letter writing is a second grade skill that students are expected to master, in my district. Here is a clip of the song I taught my students early on in the year and I used it to review the parts of a letter. This little tune continues to help my students remember the parts of a friendly letter. I predict they will use it to help them write a friendly letter in the future.

New Fun with Storybird!

During class last Thursday a few of my clever and creative colleagues and I had the opportunity to explore Storybird, for the first time. Storybird is an interactive online tool that can be used to create stories and read already developed stories. There is an array of different genres of artwork that you can choose from to develop your story. For example, there is a whole page of different types of "scary" pictures. I like how you have the option of choosing your pictures prior to creating your story (pictures guide your story) or you can write your story first and then hope to find pictures that match (story guides your picture choice). On our first try with Storybird we chose to pick a genre of pictures first and then create our story based on the pictures. Together we wrote a "quaint-little" story about a little girl named Susie who likes to go exploring. As we dabbled with the program I came to realize that my students would most likely LOVE this story making tool. It was very user/kid friendly and fun! My colleagues and I shared many laughs while creating our story. The pictures we chose helped to spark ideas and take "Susie" on an adventurous journey. I believe in using Storybird my students' writing could be enhanced compared to what they may produce with simply pencil and paper. My colleagues and I ended up developing a story that could be used to teach students about making inferences based on picture and text clues. Take a look...it's in our book...



So...Did you know that Susie was using her imagination in her house the entire story?
Storybird users how would you rate my story?

I would LOVE to find out how other teachers are using Storybird in their classrooms...