Story Bird to Engage Reluctant Writers

StoryBird is a great tool for getting students excited about writing their own creative short stories. Many of the students that I teach are very creative, but are not necessarily extrinsically motivated to write. However, when given the opportunity to create a product that is aesthetically appealing and feels like a professional, published piece, my students wrote more! Some even created additional stories that went beyond the assigned writing.


Within this unit I have asked my sixth grade students to respond to a variety of quick writes. The goal of these prompts is to teach that writing is a recursive process and as such the prompts need to be revisited, giving students the opportunity to add on, revise, edit, and publish. This is where StoryBird comes in and serves as a way to get students excited about the recursive nature of the writing process.


The first StoryBird that my students created was a response to Sandra Cisneros' short story "Eleven". After reading the story, students responded in their notebooks by adding a scene of their own to Cisneros' story. The scene could be a piece of dialogue in which the student imagined what Rachel might say if she had confronted her teacher after the incident with the red sweater, or some other addition of their own to the original story.


During the next class session, I was able to procure 10 laptops for students to use. Students were paired up to create a collaborative StoryBird based on the "scenes" that they created in their notebooks during the previous lesson.


Here is the procedure I followed for the first session with StoryBird:



I paired up students, and I showed students how to log on to StoryBird with the individual usernames and passwords that I created with my teacher account. (The teacher account is very useful because it allows you to create a space for students to work with great web 2.0 tools, while also protecting students privacy.)

I explained that today, they would explore and "play with" a tool that they would use to create their own storybooks from writings that they create in class. I showed students the basic features of the tool and shared a sample StoryBird that I had created. 

Next, students were given their assignment, and showed how to access it. They were given time to work collaboratively, combining their drafts to create one story based on the prompt. Students were told to find pictures that support their story as best as possible, knowing that they would not always be able to find the perfect picture to fit their original story. 

When I wasn't conferencing with student groups, I worked on creating my StroyBird on the projector, modeling the process, and getting into the trenches with them. 

In all, the first session with StoryBird was very effective. Students really liked creating their own stories and were very engaged in the process. It was very helpful to have students work with partners during this day of experimentation because this enabled students with strong technology skills to help those with less technology experience.



(Above: Shows cover and one page example from teacher sample. The selected artwork in the sample is a good opportunity to discuss how to choose themes for their storybook. Not all artwork will fit perfectly with their story ideas, yet artwork can still enhance the story.)



(Above: Shows teacher view including list of assignments that have been created and a class library of published storybirds. Also included but not displayed, class roster with student names and link to individual assignments.)