This reading, writing, and story-telling activity is meant to go with a unit on animals for young, intermediate ESL students. It involves writing and telling progressively more parts of a story based on pictures of different animals on Storybird. The first picture provides an example of a full story. The second picture requires students to write the ending. The third picture requires students to write the middle and the ending. The final picture requires students to write the full story.
Detailed Procedure:
1. Explain to the students that they are going to look at pictures of animals and write parts of stories based on the pictures.
2. Open the Storybird story and have different students read the beginning (show them how the beginning is the first paragraph), middle (second paragraph), and end (third paragraph) of the story.
3. Ask a student to summarize the story. Ask students to think about other ways the story could have ended. What else might have happened? Write ideas on the board.
4. Explain that the next story has a beginning and a middle, but no ending. The students will write the ending.
5. Ask the students to take out a piece of paper and write their name in the upper left hand corner.
6. Go to the next picture in Storybird. Have different students read the beginning and middle aloud and ask for different ideas on the ending.
7. Give students 3-5 minutes to write the ending of the story on their paper. After they write the ending, they should come up with a title for the story.
8. Ask students to turn to a partner and share what they created.
9. If the class is small enough and time permitting, each student could read their story and the class could vote on most creative, funniest, happiest, saddest, etc.
10. Move to the next picture and explain that students will now write the middle and end.
11. Read the beginning of the third story and give the students 5 - 7 minutes to write the middle and end.
12. Repeat the story sharing process of steps 8 - 9.
13. Advance to the final picture. Tell the students that they need to write the full story - beginning, middle, and end.
14. Give the students 10 minutes to write the story.
15. Repeat the story sharing process of steps 8 - 9.
Erin, I really like the art on Storybird because it's so expressive, and I think it has a lot of opportunities for language learners. I like how your activity gradually un-scaffolds the writing process of beginning, middle, and end. Do you have any ideas for sharing/publishing students' versions? Can they (or you) put them into Storybird somehow? An article from Warschauer (1998?) suggested that the idea of having a real audience is motivating for students. I think it would be great to have a publisher's corner in the classroom.
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