Story Creation
Everyone loves a good yarn. Stories can capture interest, teach a lesson, introduce new ideas, and encourage students to dream. A good storyteller can spark excitement in the hearts of the reader, or listener. With the ubiquitous use of tablets and phones in the classroom, stories can be easily accessed online and downloaded onto the tablet or phone. Students are often as busy as their parents and while riding in the car or bus from one place to another, they can access an embedded recording from their class pages, or they can go to sound cloud and listen to a story. Recording a lesson in short, easy to understand stories can communicate so much. Students can repeat the lesson over and over to gain a better understanding. Here are some sample stories created for online learning using free Apps for the iPad or recorded using Audacity, a free to download audio editor.
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Students can often create their own dynamic stories because they have so much imagination. A slash of color, a sketch on a napkin, and they are off and running. Below are some examples of expressive art that can fire up the imaginations of young minds.
In the islands, children grow up learning the oral traditions, stories that are sometimes called legends. In this digital example, I used a legend from the Republic of the Marshall Islands and a collection of royalty-free images to create a simple story using an iPad app for book creation.
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Students can create their own drawings that tell simple stories using apps such as Bookemon. They can work with a partner and design a story about their personal experiences like a trip to the zoo or a boat ride to another island. They can design a step by step instruction and draw out their own how-to book. Students can work together as a class and design a cookbook that includes favorite, original recipes from home. Please note that for younger children, publishing may require parental permission.
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Here are legends from the islands of Guam and Belau using Audacity as a tool to record voice and embed into this website. Instructors can use this type of lesson as part of their blended learning design. Students can listen to the recording and write their reactions as part of their homework assignment. In a regular classroom, teachers can use these recordings to have students listen and answer teacher designed questions to assess listening skills.
A favorite legend from Guam on Sound Cloud, the story of a boy who was so strong that he was able to jump from Guam to Rota.