Storyjumper

Storyjumper is a brilliant tool to help us to develop our students’ writing skills. In order to see how to get the most out of it, I have created the following story with some of my 4th class students’ work. 

It's Halloween

Obviously, my intention would be to work with the whole group of students. On organising our work, I would first divide my students into small groups of two or three.

I have created the above story as a final task, having previously worked on the vocabulary and structures related to physical appearance.

A possible sequence of tasks would be the following:  

I would first show the students some examples of stories and familiarise them with the tool.  As a class we would then brainstorm possible ideas for creating our stories.

The students would then form groups and again brainstorm in their groups how they are going to create the story (what the story is about, characters, who writes each part, design, assignment of roles, etc.). This would be put on paper and kept as evidence of the process of their work. 

The students would then begin work on their story.  On completion of the first draft, they would share their story with another group and ask for feedback. I would give the students a checklist of items to look out for.  They would then complete a second draft and again share it with another group.  Finally, they would create the final draft and share it with the rest of the class.

 

My learning objectives for this task would be the following:

To work on the vocabulary and structures related to physical appearance with my students.

To develop students’ social / cooperative skills.

To develop their digital competence.

To develop students’ creativity.

To develop student’s autonomy.

To develop students’ confidence when using the foreign language to express ideas / to create a story.

To foster a positive attitude towards the foreign language.

 

Needless to say, the use of this tool would help me achieve all of the above goals. 

It enables the students to use the language in a creative way, with a view to sharing it with an audience.  It gives sense to the task and it gives the students freedom to express themselves in a creative manner and use their imagination. As they have to work together, it also helps to develop their social competence.  To create the story they have to become familiar with the use of the tool, thus developing their digital competence, as well as their autonomy.  Furthermore, it helps to develop confidence in our students when using the foreign language.  They can see that they are capable of being understood and that they can create something for pleasure in English.  I think that this has a very positive effect on their attitude towards the language, as we’re taking it away from “academics” and we’re bringing it to the world of the child.

Personally, I think that this tool has excellent potential and I will certainly make use of it with my classes. I’m sure my students would thoroughly enjoy the experience.  The only drawbacks are that each group would have to have access (privacy and consent are always issues, especially with minors.)  It also requires a lot of time, especially to familiarise young students with its use.

To share the finished products with the rest of the class, each group would project their story on the IWB.  The students would be provided with a checklist to enable them to evaluate each group’s work as well as their own.

As we can see, the creation of the story would also provide the students with many opportunities to co-evaluate and discuss the learning experience with each other.  With each draft, they would evaluate and get feedback on each other’s work.  On presenting the final product, each student would also have the opportunity to evaluate the final product of the other groups, as well as their own.

To conclude, this tool would be an excellent asset for use in the foreign language class, as it not only allows us to work on our students’ writing skills, but it also enables us to foster their creativity and imagination.