Storytelling, Poetry, and Technology

Project Title:  Language Arts Teachers Integrate Technology Into the Curriculum

Teachers have their course content down pat, but some can use help with integration ideas. This unit combines course content with using various Apple solutions - Keynote, iPhoto, Pages, Notes, iCloud, iMovie, and Safari. The end product is a class Keynote project. iMovie can be used for an additional activity.

The focus is a language arts storytelling unit. Students complete a storytelling/poetry/technology unit using a variety of Apple apps and software. The unit begins with a storyteller visiting the class. The storyteller tells the students various stories. Some of the stories are biographical in nature, which are based on real life experiences. The storyteller and teacher work with students on developing their own biographical stories which they will tell in front of the class. Students need to address theme, setting, details of events, mood, and techniques for speaking in front of an audience. The biographical stories summarize a topic of their choice, based on a real event in their lives. Topics can be humorous, serious, etc. Students present their stories, orally, in front of their classmates. The students rate each other’s stories as they look for story content and the use of good storytelling techniques.

Once the oral storytelling part is complete, students convert their stories into poetry. They write short poems, which are based on their stories. The poems must be a minimum of eight lines, and must summarize the biographical stories they told in class. Students represent their poems by adding images. They can draw their own images, download them from the WEB, or use personal photos. Using Pages, they include the images around the text of the poem and export them as a single image. They work with writing partners for editing and revising. They use iPhoto to store their images, Pages or Notes to write their poems, QuickTime, the WEB, and digital cameras.

The poems, with their representative images, are put into a class Keynote presentation. Each student has his/her own slide for the class collection. Each slide includes the student’s poem and images that represent the theme of the poem. The teacher supplies a slide template for the students in order to give the class collection a uniform look.

The unit combines language arts with technology. Teachers and students use Apple computers or iPad for the finished product, which is a Keynote presentation. Components of the finished product include using iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, Keynote, Safari, Notes, digital cameras, and QuickTime.

As an additional activity, teachers can import the students’ poems and images into an iPhoto album and export the album to iMovie.

Sample topics of the biographical stories and poetry are:

• My First Bike Ride

• Took Mom’s Diamond Necklace To Preschool

• The Microwave and the Exploding Hot Dog

• The Car, the Bulls, and the Scream

• Camping Nightmare

• My First Scary Movie

• The Indianapolis Zoo

• My First Broken Bone

• The Bat Invasion

• The Horrible Trip