RUSD Digital Storytelling Showcase

PICTURE YOUR NAME

by Mrs. Carlson's class Longfellow Elementary

A creative project my 1st graders were proud of was our “picture your name” project. I tasked my students with finding letters around the room that could represent the letters in their name. Students utilized classroom materials like our letter sound wall, play dough, magnet letters, and more. They took photos around the room using the camera on Seesaw and blended them together like a collage. I also made connections to our social studies unit by asking students to add symbols they identified with to represent their name. Students used the digital marker on Seesaw to create images and symbols to represent their name.

ELD PROJECTS

by Mrs. Carlson's class Longfellow Elementary

Andrea Favorite Season.mp4

By Andrea

My 1st grade ELD small group worked on various projects this year and the iPad and microphones helped build their confidence in using new vocabulary and sentence frames. One project we decided to showcase was when we used the app ChatterPix to animate a character to share a complete sentence with reasoning. Students were asked to share their favorite season supported by reasoning. Such as the weather in the fall is perfect for riding a bike. They practiced using sentence frames then recorded their final response using a microphone. Students were excited to show off their animated character with their response. Students enjoyed this project so much that we repeated this process for our folktales unit. We brainstormed various folktales we read in class then discussed elements of those folktales. Students then used sentence frames to explain which folktale was their favorite.

Oliver ELD Project.mp4

By Oliver

Tomas Favorite Folktale.mp4

By Tomas

Gaspar ELD Project.mp4

By Gaspar

Brandon Favorite Season.mp4

By Brandon

FIRST GRADE NARRATIVES

by Mrs. Wong's class Mt. View Elementary

In our first grade showcase project, students read a narrative story in their Wonders curriculum and did additional comprehension activities. Then students created their own narrative story with animals of their choice. They had to include a title page, and make their story 6 pages long with pictures on each page. Students completed their writing project in the Seesaw app and also used the website: https://www.kidzsearch.com/images.html to find and add images to go with their story. We created a word bank with words they may need help spelling in their story. These stories are completely unedited, so some stories are missing capitalization, punctuation and may use incorrect grammar / spelling. I really wanted to see what the students would be able to create on their own, without editing/correcting with the teacher.

It was amazing to see how engaged the students were and how creative their stories were. Their stories came alive with the pictures and backgrounds they used. Students were able to share their stories with a partner and then some of the students shared their stories aloud (shown on the projector) with the whole class. The ipads allowed us to complete this project along with many others, because of the ease of use with Seesaw (and other Digital Storytelling apps). Students can click, manipulate, move objects around, and easily add pictures to their “photos” and then add them to Seesaw. We would have had difficulty completing this type of project with the Chromebooks. The students were more engaged and wrote more sentences then I have seen them write when we use pencil and paper. The ipads allow for scaffolding for struggling students, English language learners, and students with disabilities, who were able to successfully complete a story they felt proud of. Some students utilized the voice-to-text feature, which helped students who may struggle with putting ideas on paper. It allowed for variety, individuality, creativity, collaboration, and voice & choice. There are many other projects we could have chosen as our showcase, but the students picked this project because it was one they felt proud of.