Curriculum Integration and Digital Storytelling in My Classroom

This week I was told to “Dream a bit…” about curriculum integration and my classroom.  We have been researching and discussing digital storytelling (see my Prezi on digital storytelling here).  It’s exciting to think about how I can and will integrate technology, and specifically, how I will use digital storytelling with my students.

I am not teaching this year, because I am going to school full-time to finish my Master of Education in Elementary Education at UCF.  In less than two months, I will be moving to the Atlanta area and hopefully will be teaching again this fall!  My teaching experience in Brevard County, Florida was mostly in first grade so, for the purposes of this assignment, I will be “dreaming” about curriculum integration in a first grade classroom in Georgia.

First thing is…I need to familiarize myself with the Georgia standards as well as the Common Core Standards (adopted by Georgia in 2010).  I was looking at a first grade teacher’s website at one of the schools I plan to apply. I wanted to see what was happening in her class to get a feel for the first grade curriculum and expectations at this prospective school.  She provided a link to the Georgia standards.  I found that the major concepts and skills taught to first graders regarding Life Science included the characteristics and basic needs of living things.

Students could create digital stories describing the characteristics and basic needs of living things in general or they could choose a specific organism (e.g. grasshopper, deer, human, bacteria, Georgia’s state flower – Cherokee Rose). I can integrate other content areas and standards depending on my requirements for the digital stories.  For example, if I wanted to incorporate the math standards regarding comparing sets of numbers, students who chose to do their digital story on characteristics and basic needs of the Cherokee Rose plant could show that the Cherokee Rose has less petals (5-9) than Maryland’s state flower, the black-eyed Susan (21 petals). Students would also be incorporating Social Studies skills by identifying these states on a map.  A student researching deer could show math comparison by sharing how newborn fawns could weigh 8 pounds and adult males can weigh as much as 250 lbs.

The class would work with photos, text, sound, and music.  I would make sure students are choosing appropriate photos with attribution by using a resource such as Wylio.  In first grade (and especially for their first digital story), I won’t need to go into all the details about copyright issues for photos and images.  However, I do think it’s important to teach them that the photos belong to someone, and it is not okay to just copy and paste any image to their work.  This is part of what the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) refers to as promoting and modeling digital citizenship and responsibility.

We would talk about my expectations for the project and view sample projects to give them ideas.  However, I would stress my acceptance of their individualized projects so as to encourage their creativity (as opposed to conforming their own stories to match the samples). For the first few digital story projects, I would have students work with partners.  Students would research facts for their stories using our Life Science curriculum books, supplemental videos, and online resources. I would also check out books from our library on each topic. Concerning online research, I would find the sources for each group and have them search within specific sites to ensure safety and time constraints are maximized.  Storyboarding our ideas on paper would be one of the steps before actually using programs like Prezi, PowerPoint, Animoto, PhotoStory, SlideShare, MovieMaker….I’m still learning the list goes on and on.   Many teachers have been incorporating digital stories into their classrooms for years.  For those of you who have not, it's not too late to start. The possibilities are endless and the potential for engaged, motivated students is a sure thing! 

Check out these digital stories created by Kindergarten and 1st grade students.  Please leave a comment and share any resources you recommend for digital storytelling (graphics, programs, sounds, etc).  I'd love to hear from you.