Submitted by: Claudia Ketcham, Second Grade
Collaborators: Whitney deBordenave, Elementary ITRT
School: Crestview Elementary School
Summary
Children love to talk about themselves.They also enjoy using technology. Combining these two interests seemed to be the perfect lesson. I introduced the class to the idea of personal narratives by telling life stories about myself. We discussed how they would accomplish this task, through writing, drawings, and using technology. I then posed the authentic task: “The Reading Rainbow is looking to air a segment on digital storytelling.” Students were encouraged to choose Pixie, ActvInspire, Keynote, or Comic Life. The end product was a personal narrative told through digital storytelling.
TIPC Ratings
The lesson is Approaching in Research and Information Fluency as the authentic task was personal and touching. Students had to collect information about their lives from family members, photo albums, etc. Students also devised questions that they wanted to answer in their digital story about themselves.
The lesson is Ideal/Target in Communication and Collaboration as students worked together to accomplish their objectives, noted by their verbal references that they collaborated with each other in the classroom and with their families at home to craft a high quality product. The teacher shared student work on her blog with families and on her Vimeo account to reach a larger audience.
The lesson is Approaching in Critical Thinking and Problem Solving as students had to write a narrative about themselves based on an authentic task. The teacher offered several digital tools to the students, and they were allowed to select the one that they preferred for their project.
This lesson is Ideal/Target as students were given the options of Pixie, AcitvInspire, Comic Life, or Keynote to create their product. In the interviews, students reflected on their work by discussing why they selected the digital tool they used and what they would do differently next time. The lesson was personalized and each digital story was different and creative.
Student Artifact
Download Files
- Lesson Plan
- Student Rubric
- link to vimeo (interviews with some digital stories)
- link to vimeo (all digital stories)
