Writing with Storybird

Today we had a collapsed curriculum day; we call it a hall day.  This is a day where the timetable is abandoned (!) and students work in a subject all day.  Today in ICT we had half of our Year 9 classes working with us (that’s about 210 students) on a project to write stories for younger children.

We were using Storybird for the stories and Moodle for the delivery.  The fictional scenario was about a once great book company called Winkleberry books who had falled on hard times since they published “Killer Toddler Zombies”.  Their role was to restore this company with the next big thing!

We set up a course with tutorial videos, helpsheets, and web pages.  All passages of text were available with sound so they could listen along if the text was not accessible to them.  This was available via Moodle and you can view it by clicking here and using the password typeface

They had the whole school day on it and the outcomes were fantastic!  Here are a few of the books produced.  These are from mixed ability classes and groups.

 

Of course we also got some students to review them on their blogs.  Here are some of the comments (and links to the blogs).

"Today at school we had our ICT hall day!!! That meant all day we did ICT. We had to create a childs story book in groups using story bird!!! It’s really cool, other artists upload their images for you to use for free!!!"
Charlie S’s Blog

"Today at school we had hall day. Our hall day was a whole day of ICT:) I enjoyed today because it was a change from the other hall days that we have had"
Dani’s Blog

"everything has to be just right and its really difficult just to make up your own story because you have to make sure you have all the right punctuation amd i find that really difficult, But Hall Day today was the best one yet!"
Becca’s Blog

"I have enjoyed making my story today it has been helpful for the future incase i need to do something that involves making a book."
Chantelle’s Blog