K-12 Digital Story Telling Project

Stacy Kozub

Analyze Learners: The students that I work with are all first graders and are either 6 or 7 years
old. I had a group of 5 students work on turning their personal narrative that we were working
on in writing into a digital story. This group consisted of 3 girls and 2 boys, all of which are
reading above grade level. Before this project they had never used the program Wixie before,
which is the program that they used to make their stories.

Standards and Outcomes:

CCSS:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.3
Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include
some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide
some sense of closure.
ISTE:
Creative Communicator: 6b:Students create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix
digital resources into new creations.
Methods, Media, Materials:
In this lesson students will use premade graphic organizers to organize their thoughts. There
will be an organizer for their pictures and an organizer for their words. In this lesson students
will use their devices to go on a program called Wixie. Wixie is a program that Baltimore County
Public Schools have provided on their devices. With this program students can draw pictures,
record their voice, and add music to the background. As a teacher I am able to view all the
students work in my class.
Picture Graphic Organizer:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mMHUSsrJV2WlY1XcyMxhskwQ3GfHRqOG9N_9EWvN_
98/edit?usp=sharing
First, Next, Then, Last Organizer: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/First-Next-
Then-Last-Graphic-Organizer-1673147
Utilize Technology, Media, and Materials & Require Learning Participation: (Lesson Plan)
Length of lesson: Over several days
Curriculum Connection: In the first-grade writing curriculum students write a personal
narrative. I decided to have a small group of students turn their personal narrative into a digital
story to share with the class.
1. Discuss with students what a story is? What are some things that all stories have.
(Setting, characters, events)
2. Explain to students that over the next week they will be writing their own story. They
will then turn their story into a digital story. Explain that a digital story is very similar to
a movie.
3. Brainstorm ideas about what they could write about and make a list.
4. Have students pick a topic and think about who the characters are and where the
setting is.
5. Have student complete the illustration organizer. At this step students are drawing the
pictures of what happened first, next, then, and last in their story.
6. Once the pictures are complete, they will then add words to their story. They will use a
first, next, then, last organizer. Remind students that their words and pictures should
match.
7. After both organizers are filled out peer conference with students. Have students read
their work to you and make sure that their sentences make sense to them.
8. Mini-Lesson on Wixie. Show students where Wixie is located on their device, and the
cool features Wixie has to offer. (Drawing tools, how to add text)
9. Have students draw all of their pictures first. Explain that all together they should have 5
pages: title page, and a page for each event (first, next, then, last).
10. After their drawings are complete pull students one on one to record their voice on each
slide. Show them how to add music to the background if they would like.
11. Once students are all finished have them fill out a self-evaluation (two things they loved
about their story and one thing they wish they could change)
12. Students then can view each other’s stories.

Evaluate and Revise:

Evaluation of Student Learning:
There were many formative assessments in this lesson. At the beginning of the lesson
during our discussion about what the parts of a story were I was looking to see who was able to
answer the question and who couldn’t. Throughout the lesson I was conferencing with students
and providing feedback that they could use to make their story even better. I also observed a
lot and took notes to see who was having trouble coming up with a setting, characters or
events. I used these to help me with what I wanted to make sure I addressed during writing
conferences. I also used self-assessment forms to see how the students thought they did on
their work. For the summative assessment I was looking for organization and how well they
were able to tell a story. I was looking to see if they used transition words and if they stuck to
the same topic all throughout their story. I was also looking to see if all the story elements that
we discussed at the beginning if the lesson were shown. (Did they have characters, a visible
setting, and events?)
Lesson Reflection
Overall, I believe this lesson went very well. The students were engaged and every time I
told them they would be working on their stories they got very excited. The students planned
out their pictures and words very well. The graphic organizers that I chose to use fit very well
with this assignment. They were able to sketch their drawings before drawing them on Wixie,
and they had a script in front of them when they were ready to record the words. Having the
first, next, then, and last on their paper was extremely helpful so that they didn’t forget to use
the transition words. Throughout the lesson there was some difficulties at times when using the
technology. I had never used the audio feature of Wixie before with a group of students, so I
was learning how to use it with them. The Wixie program that I used sometimes had a hard
time picking up the students’ voices, and you could only add a limited amount of audio to each
slide. This project took a little longer than I expected for it to take. I am hoping that next time I
have this group create a digital story that it will be a little quicker and smoother since they will
know how to use all the features. Next time I do a lesson like this I would like to have my
students who are recording their voice have a quiet room or area to go to. Unfortunately, I was
not able to find a quiet place for them to record their voice for this assignment. I loved seeing
their faces light up with excitement when they played their final projects.
Student Work Samples

Pre-Production Work Samples:

Formative Assessments:
Observations/Conference Notes:

Final Projects:
For Wixie there is a URL to go to and then you have to type in the public key to gain access.
Jack’s Project URL: https://www.wixie.com/s19173016
Public Key: jkszim

Addison’s Project URL: https://www.wixie.com/s19284705

Public Key: c2dyqy