Motivating Students to Write
by Judi Roach
How do you motivate your students to write? My suggestion is, give them a big challenge. The challenge is, write for a world wide audience! That is exactly what my fourth graders did this year as a culminating project for our Iditarod unit. Each student wrote Iditarod Poetry and published it in a digital/audio format using Photo Story.
Photo Story is a free Microsoft download that makes publishing for the world a breeze. This easy to use program provides students an opportunity to write, illustrate, and narrate their writing. Each student wrote and illustrated one page of our class book. The page showcased two of their poems and illustrations. The students narrated their poetry. Once the book was recorded, I saved it on my computer and then imported it to Microsoft Movie Maker. This was necessary so that I could create CD’s of the Photo Story for each of my students. I was also able to save the Movie Maker file on my Google Sites account as a webpage. Then, it was a simple matter of copying the link and pasting it on my class website.
Every year, my class writes a classroom book with an Iditarod theme. This has always been a fun project, but I struggled with the fact that there was only one copy of the book. We have made copies, but they just aren’t the same. Using Photo Story solved that problem. Now every student has a digital copy of the book. Although not every student has a computer at home, they still have a copy when they do have access to a computer. In addition, if a student is visiting relatives who have Internet access, they can show off their work simply by visiting our class web site. This year’s class was very excited at the prospect of publishing their writing for a world wide audience. They took on the challenge with fervor and were engaged in the writing process just as if they were Gary Paulsen or Pam Flowers. If you’re looking for a way to motivate students to write, Photo Story might be just the tool for you!
From Nebraska to Alaska; Iditarod Poetry by Judi Roach
I first learned about Photo Story during a school in service. My wheels were turning as the the techie wiz was describing the program. I knew this was one way to motivate young writers and to give them a bigger purpose for writing. As a follow up, I arranged for Craig Hicks, aka, the local ESU techie wiz, to present a training session for interested teachers in our district. After about 30 minutes of instruction, the teachers were armed with enough know how to create their own Photo Story.
Before we created our Photo Story, we needed to learn about poetry. I taught my students four different types of poetry; Haiku, Acrostic, Free Verse, Diamantes, Limericks. For this project, most of the students picked Iditarod based Haiku, Diamantes, or Free Verse. A great web source to help teach poetry is www.scholastic.com. Three famous poets provide the “how to of poetry” at three different grade levels. If you teach different forms of poetry throughout the year, your students will be pros by the time this project rolls around. The second step was for the students to write their poetry and pick the two poems they would like to publish. After editing their poems and drawing a rough draft of their illustrations, the students wrote their final copies. Each student created a page with two of their poems and illustrations. We had a class contest to see who would illustrate the front and back covers. Each student had a chance to draw their ideas and we voted on the winners. The class voted on the title and the publishing began. After the publishing was complete, each student received a copy of their page to practice their narration prior to recording it in Photo Story. I bound the book after all of the hard copies were finished.
We had to create our book in a digital format, so each student took a picture of their page using a digital camera. I taught the students how to download pictures to my laptop. Once the photos were saved in a folder, we were able to start creating our Photo Story.
The following steps will help you navigate through the process.
1. Download the Photo Story software from www.microsoft.com. This is a free download. The system requirements are XP or Vista.
2. After you have successfully done that, you need to learn how to use the program. I can not give a step by step instruction of how to create a Photo Story Project, I am sure I would leave something out! J The easiest way to learn about Photo Story is to use a tutorial on the Web. A good one if you prefer to read the material is http://www.windowsphotostory.com/ . If you prefer a lesson on creating a Photo Story step by step with narration, I suggest going to You Tube and searching for Photo story tutorials. There are a number of tutorials that are very easy to follow. Most of them are less than 10 minutes long. I suggest using the You Tube tutorials to get you started. You can flip back and forth from the tutorial to your Photo Story after watching a couple of the demos. You can also use the help button on the program itself. However, I think the You Tube tutorials are more user friendly. DO NOT BE AFRAID, THIS PROGRAM IS VERY EASY TO USE! Give it a try you will be amazed at how easy it is to use.
3. After we created our project, I saved the project to my C drive.
4. I wanted to make CD’s for each of my students and to also publish this on the web. In order to do this, I went to Windows Movie Maker and imported the project into this program. I dropped each slide onto the clipboard. Don’t panic if all the pages don’t show. They are there. Just drag and drop them on the clipboard in the order that they appear, and play the program. After I played the Photo Story and everything was were I wanted it to be, I saved the project. I was then able to create a CD of the project for each of my students.
5. To publish it on the web, I used my Google account. I loaded the video on Google sites. Once it was loaded on Google sites, I was able to copy the link and link it to my class webpage. The final step in publishing for the world!
I hope this helps you and your students embark on a new venue for creating and publishing.
Happy Writing! Judi Roach
Judi Roach was a finalist for Target 2009 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail.
