Using StoryBird platform to crate stories

Hello Literary Explorers! 

Today, I´m going to talk you about STORYBIRD, the tool that Raquel showed us some weeks ago in order to create books and stories.

Storybird is a platform to create visual stories to share with the rest of the world. The story you make, it is organized in a book with illustrations and animations of different artists which make your story more attractive. In the platform, there are millions of stories created by teachers, students and more.

Why can we use this platform in our classrooms?

Because creating a story, our students work their thinking skills. First of all, our students can discover other stories written by other people or students of the same age and it can give them a clue to write new stories. At the same time they learn from others we can give them a bit of scaffolding to start writing new stories. Moreover, this platform encourages communication by connecting with others, this is a great way to promote socialization and students can know new students by sharing their stories and it is secure and safe. And also because it is free, students don´t have to spend money using this platform and it is a great idea to encourage reading.

In the platform, there are a section for teachers which is a tool that they consider inspirational because of the gorgeous illustrations, simple because is very easy to use it, social because students can share and comment on each other´s work, shareable because stories can be shared via email, downloaded, etc., and as they say it just works.

The platform also provides a large range of topics in order to make you easier to find the stories you like. It is divided into these categories: adventure, animals, diary, dreams, education, family, etc. And also you can choose the age: preschool, kids, adults, etc.

Here you have some examples of stories shared in Storybird.

 

Here you have also a video tutorial of Storybird if you have any doubts of how to use it.

In my opinion, Storybird is a great tool to use with our children, because we can use it as a didactic resource in a bilingual context, for example:

- Creating stories with different topics related to the course content, writing stories about characters. Inventing stories about cross-cutting themes: friendship, care for the environment, equality, etc.

- Developing short stories in English to work language, vocabulary books, books about animals, plants, etc.

- To illustrate poems, fragments of literary, familiar stories, etc.

What do you think about this tool?

I still creating my poems with Storybird, but as soon as possible I will share with you my literary creations but also I would like to read your creations.

Keep in touch explorers!

Nuria

Why are Reading Strategies so important in Clil?

Good afternoon explorers!

If you remember, some weeks ago we were reviewing in class the most significant reading strategies such as critical reading strategy, reading comprehension strategy or making predictions among others.

These reading strategies are so important in Clil because they work the main aspects of this educational approach, but first of all I am going to talk about some of these strategies.

-          Critical reading strategy is a strategy in which children have to guess the main character of the book looking at the cover, so they use their schema to make a clear understanding at what they think the book is talking about. They also have to wonder on something that appears inside the book, then, they try to find the answer making connections with pictures and reading. They use their critical thinking in order to understand what they are reading. Students generate and answer questions as they read a story to facilitate deep thinking and comprehension.

-          Making predictions children determine what they think will happen in the text. For that, they use the title, the text and illustrations. So, the main objective of this reading strategy is to encourage the students to improve their comprehension through predictions. The teacher enhances curiosity in children making gestures and sounds in order to predict what is going to happen. Making predictions we activate children´s learning and incorporate higher thinking skills.

-          Mind pictures: Promoting Comprehension through Visualization is a strategy in which visualizing events from a story extends students' understanding of what they are reading and helps them retell important events and characters. It is a kind of scaffolding for them to understand better the text and also to remember it. This strategy promotes also communication because they have to share their opinions with classmates.

-          Engaging in Reading students retell a story after engaging in a shared reading activity. This strategy work on their thinking skills from lower order (lots) to higher order (hots). Moreover, retelling the story they activate previous knowledge and by sharing it into a poster they work cooperative learning.

These are some of the reading strategies that we have learnt in class and they are so important in Clil for many reasons because as you can see they activate children´s learning incorporating high order thinking skills working deeper thinking and comprehension. Also, these strategies are accompanied by scaffolding such us visual scaffolding (graphics, tables, charts…) and verbal scaffolding. Moreover, they promote communication sharing opinions with others and it aids students in the socialization process because group activities promote student interaction and facilitate working with the language and content.

By making predictions, students must give the teacher evidence of learning which also activates active learning.

For children that have reading difficulties, these kinds of strategies could help them to understand texts and we can encourage reading in children, because as we have seen by reading we can make plenty of activities to work both content and language integrated learning which is the meaning of Clil.