Re-purposing Technology Lesson Plan

TE 831: Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology

Summary Box



Lesson Objectives: The student will be able to
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single
event or several loosely linked events (W.K.3)
Explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing (W.K.6)


Student NETS Standards Alignment:
1b. Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and
develop innovative products and processes using technology. Create
original works as a means of personal or group expression.
2a. Students use digital media and environments to communicate and
work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning
and contribute to the learning of others. Interact, collaborate, and publish
with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments
and media.

Materials:
Student computers
Teacher starboard
Writing journals
Pencils








Lesson title: Tell Me a Story
Prepared by: Rachel Upholzer
Subject area: Narrative Writing
Technology used: Storybird, Starboard, Computer
Length of lesson: 2 lessons, 50--60 minutes each
Suggested grade level: Kindergarten



Lesson Procedure:

DAY ONE

Introduction (10 minutes):
*Prior to this lesson, the teacher should create a Storybird.com account for the
class and set up an attached account for each student. Then when the student is
choosing a picture, that image can be saved to their account*

The teacher introduces the lesson by showing a picture of a little girl and boy that
are sliding down a purple slide. The boy looks happy, but the little girl has a
scared look on her face. Ask the class to take a moment to look at the picture
and come up with a story in their head that would match this picture. Have the
students turn to an elbow partner and share the stories they created. Return to
whole group and select a few students to share their story. Point out that each
student had a different idea for what was happening in the picture and the story
that went with it.

At this point, introduce the website Storybird.com up on the classroom Starboard.
Show them several pictures that they will eventually get the opportunity to
choose from. Explain to them that today they will be pick an illustration that they
like and they will come up with a story that fits the picture.

Transition (5 minutes)
Have the students head to the computer lab.
*Note, kids should already be familiar with navigating a computer and clicking
with the mouse and scrolling*

Activity One (10 minutes)
Have the students take their time scrolling through the available choices of
illustrations until they decide on a picture they want to write a story about. The
students should raise their hand, show the selected picture to a teacher and get
help printing off the image. Have the students share with their computer partner
what picture they are writing about and what their story will be.

Transition (5 minutes)
Have the students go back to the classroom and grab their journals and pencils.

Activity Two (20 minutes)
Have the students begin writing their stories in their writing journal. Make sure to
remind them to have their story match the illustration that they printed off. The
goal for this activity is 4-5 sentences.

Transition (2 minutes)

Have the students put their printed illustration in their writing journal and put it
away. Students return to the carpet

Conclusion (5 minutes)
Go over how important our words our when telling a story. Explain that although
pictures help us see the story, that sometimes it is even better to picture the story
in our minds when listening to someones words. Let them know that the
following day they will dictate their stories to the teacher/assistant/computer
teacher and that adult will type the text into the Storybird.com illustration for
them.

DAY TWO

Introduction (10 minutes):
Go over the previous days lesson and reteach the concept of the importance of
words in a story. Have the students look at a preselected picture by the teacher
on the Storybird.com website. Ask the students to think for a minute what they
think the teacher wrote about for this illustration. Have a few students share their
ideas. The teacher then reads their version of the story. Have the students think
about the similarities and differences between the teachers story and the
students. Redirect the class to the focus of the lesson, which will be them
finishing their stories and then dictating them to the teachers for publishing.

Transition (5 minutes)
Have the students grab their journals and pencils and head to the computer lab.
*It would be helpful if the computer lab teacher already has the illustrations from
the previous day pulled up on the students screens*

Activity One (30 minutes)
Have the students who need extra time finishing their sentences continue to work
on their stories in their writing journal. For those students that are already
finished and have 4-5 good sentences, have them sit with a teacher and dictate
the story to them. While students are waiting to have their stories typed up, they
can be editing their paper and making sure they have correct punctuation and
capitalization. Once the stories are dictated and published, the work will be saved
to the account where it can be pulled up in the classroom.

Transition (5 minutes)
Have the students go back to the classroom and put away their journal. Return to
the carpet for sharing time.

Activity Two (10 minutes)
Choose 3 students to have share their stories with the class. Pull the stories up
on the Starboard and let the student read their writing from the board. After 3
have shared, let the remaining students know they will have a chance to share in
the days that follow.



Conclusion (5 minutes)
Go over once more how important our words our when telling a story. Explain
that when we look at a picture it is sometimes hard to tell what is happening in
the story and that it makes it much more clear when there is writing. Briefly
introduce and discuss with the class what it means to publish your work and that
they can now call themselves authors. End the lesson by telling them they will be
spending the next few weeks creating stories using the Storybird.com website
and they can begin to share them with classmates as well as friends and family
at home.



Reflection


For this lesson, I chose to incorporate technology that the students were
already familiar with to go along with a new piece of technology that would be
introduced in this lesson. The two technologies the students were familiar with
were that classroom Starboard and the computers in the computer lab. The new
technology was a writing website called Storybird. This website allows a teacher
to create a classroom account in which students can select an image or images
they would like to write a story about and then their only focus is on the writing
and not the illustration. I chose this tool to use because at my students age,
which is five and six year olds, they tend to put a lot of focus on the illustration
portion of their writing time and I wanted them to shift that focus onto what they
were actually writing. By using this website, the students would select a premade
image they wanted to build a story around and that way they could concentrate
on their words and not have to take up most of their writing time drawing a
picture.

When thinking about what technology to include in my classroom, I found
it really important to think back to the SCOT theory and make sure that my
lesson was not all about the technology itself but having that technology enhance
a standard of learning that needed to be met. I also considered the TPACK
theory and I took a concept that was already an important part of our classroom
curriculum that I was very familiar with teaching and knowing what standards
needed to be met and I slowly began to incorporate technology into how they
were achieving those goals. I think that this is a step that is easily skipped or
done incorrectly by teachers because they are trying so hard to incorporate that
technology into their classroom that they often forget what the purpose of that
technology is supposed to be. Therefore, when creating this lesson I made sure
that I knew what I wanted to teach and what the objectives of the lesson were. I
then played around with how a website such as Storybird would enhance the
learning of the objectives and whether or not it was worth presenting it to the
students. I finally made sure that I felt comfortable with the technology I was
using for the lessons because I find that many teachers think that they can use
any technology without having first practiced it and that is when lessons become
ineffective.
Due to how late in the school year I was introducing this technology, I was
very apprehensive about how effective it would be in my classroom. We ended
school on June 13
th
and I taught these two lessons on June 3
rd
and 4
th
. What
made it a little easier was that I had several students that were already done with
school for the summer, so I could focus a lot more on a smaller group of students

rather than trying to spread out my time between my 26 students. When I
introduced the pictures on the website at the beginning of the lesson, the
students were so excited. They had gotten so used to our routine of having them
only write in their writing journals each day that something this new gave them
such great motivation to do their best writing. What I found was the most difficult
part was the computer lab portion of the lessons and have all the students
working at once on the computers. Although they have computer class and have
had experiences using the mouse and scrolling, I found that I was always needed
in several places at once. I believe that if this tool was introduced much sooner in
the school year the students would be able to build their understanding of the site
and eventually work the program on their own with little assistance. The most
positive outcome I got from the lessons was how creative the students were and
how great of writing they produced. Most of them, 12 of the 16 students, wrote
more than the required 4-5 sentences and more importantly produced quality
sentences that flowed together. I was very impressed with their abilities despite
their young age and could see this program being very effective in the other
elementary grades as well. Overall, I really enjoyed using this program in my
class and my students show great enthusiasm for writing that was difficult to
produce so close to the end of the school year.
This program is great because how the program is used is completely up
to the creator. Although I used it for my kids to work on their writing skills and not
their illustration skills, this could also be used for literacy and even math. For
literacy, the teacher could create a story using Storybird and the students need to

identify key ideas, the characters, setting, problem and solution. The class could
also create their own stories as a whole group and could be printed and put into
the classroom library to be read during Daily Five. For math, the teacher can
create story problems based on the illustrations. The students would have to use
their literacy skills to read the story problem and their math skills to do the
addition/subtraction problem.
This lesson has not only aided my further understanding of the program
Storybird, but more importantly it helped me understand the balance that SCOT
discusses about knowing that technology is their to enhance your lesson, not be
your lesson. There are endless possibilities of how to use technology in the
classroom, and not all possibilities are beneficial. This lesson really forced me to
sit and think about whether or not what I was doing was beneficial and that using
the technology made a difference that my students couldnt afford not to
experience. This lesson, along with TPACK and SCOT has made me realize that
most of what I used my technology for in the classroom was actually
inappropriate or not truly beneficial to my students learning. I have learned to
first look at what I am teaching and then discover how I can incorporate
technology in my lesson to enhance that lesson, instead of finding technology to
use and then finding lessons that would fit what I want to share with the class.