Spanish Stories

As a culminating elementary level project, my 5th grade Spanish students wrote stories in small groups, then created an actual book and illustrated it in art class. Originally, students were also to create a multimedia project to go along with their book. However, due to a time crunch, we did not get to the multimedia project. I plan on starting earlier next time so that we have time to complete this portion of the project.

Prior to the actual story project, we wrote a whole-class story together by first creating a character, then deciding on a problem and finally a solution. By creating a story together, I modeled the process in which we need to write a story. Two students were my illustrators for my character and then I added their drawing to PicKids to create illustrations and then compiled the illustrations in a Nearpod to create a book.

Then, students received a digital notebook that I created in Canva and transferred to a Google Doc. In it had the class story examples, a timeline, rubric, and space to write the story. Once we wrote the story, we transferred it onto an actual hard cover book and illustrated the book in art class! Finally, during the last week of school we will read our books to kindergarteners!

Since this was my first time doing this project, I have definitely learned a lot. First, I am planning on beginning story writing and reading in much younger grades, so that by the time students enter 5th grade, they will be much more prepared on how to write a story in Spanish. I realized that many students wanted to write the story in English and then translate it into Spanish. Unfortunately that cannot work because our English vocabulary certainly exceeds what we are able to say in Spanish. By starting to write stories in younger grades, I think that they will feel more comfortable to stay in the target language. Also, I did realize that giving the classes a story guide definitely helped students stay within their parameters of what they can say in Spanish.

Also, I will start the project sooner - Just everything took a little longer than I had anticipated, and therefore we did not get time to make our multimedia project. Also, I may give the choice of a hardback book or a digital book.

All in all, I was very impressed with how the stories turned out and how proud the students are of their work. It is nice to have something for the students to keep from all of their hard work in world language class throughout their elementary career.