MONICA H SCHNEE

K-2 | All | Digital storytelling

My Classroom Innovation

I teach Kindergarten and first grade English language learners. My goal is to teach my students English language but also to teach them the traditional ways of learning and producing work as well as to prepare them to learn and use digital technology. It is very exciting for my students to be able to produce their work online so they can be part of their own world of 21st century literacies. They use different websites to watch and listen to content that is being taught so they can do research to help them develop their listening and reading skills, they work in a medium that is part of their lives and they learn how to become authors of "hard copy" books and digital books. The magic of the digital stories is that they can see their work online, hear themselves reading, and share this with their American peers, at home and with their relatives overseas. Therefore, they become worldwide authors and the experience of learning English and content is validated in a very real way that extends beyond the classroom. I have found that voicethread is a great way for them to do this. We also use wallwisher to write notes about books we read and questions we want to ask authors. We write notes on post its and then they use laptops to write them on the wall so once again, they share their work with their parents and overseas relatives.I am also trying to get approval to use Skype in the classroom so we can exchange and share what we learn with other students overseas.

How Students were Engaged

The Kindergartners, who are just beginning to speak and write in English as their second language, become "researchers" on specific topics to acquire vocabulary, reading and writing skills and to express themselves in English. Polar bears are fascinating to them. We worked on a whole unit using fiction, nonfiction, websites so they could watch the real animals in action -pbs nature- and national geographic. We also listened to the polar bears using find sounds.After we wrote our big book and shared it with all the Kindergartners peers in our schools, we made our digital story. Students were thrilled to hear themselves online and see their work. Their parents were excited to hear them speaking English, made comments to praise their work and the voicethread was shared with other family members in their home countries.

PBS Program/Content Used

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/great-white-bear/introduction/3348/