Exploiting StoryboardThat for Language Practice

StoryboardThat is a great tool for getting students to think visually and create picture stories and narrative.

Students begin by clicking on 'Create Storyboard'. They can then select background scenes for each of the frames of their storyboard.

Next they select characters. There's a really wide range and variety of characters to choose from and once these are on the storyboard they can be changed using the editor.

Students can then add text elements such as speech bubbles and thought bubbles and write in their text.

Once the storyboard is complete there are some interesting options for sharing and exporting. You can export as images for PowerPoint, Download to print, embed the storyboard into a site or blog or launch it as a slideshow directly from the site.

StoryboardThat is a great freemium tool. On the free account you can create and save two storyboards each week. If you want to become a serious user though you'll need to pay for an account, but accounts for educators are very reasonably priced.

Be sure to check out the Teacher Resources section of the site. You can find lots of great examples and lesson ideas there. Many of these are based around literary classics and you can simply adapt and customise the ready-made storyboards. Here's an example from 'A Christmas Carole' by Charles Dickens.

Quick Classroom Suggestions

• Create flashcards of a storyline and get students to make a dialogue and write the story.
• Get students to create storyboards of stories they write.
• Create a storyboard with dialogue to get students to practice reported speech. You could create two versions of the storyboard one with only character A's dialogue and the other with only character B's dialogue, then get students to work in pairs and tell each other what the characters said.
• You can create a the first three frames of the story and get students to work in pairs and create the next three. They can then exchange their three frames with a new pair and do the next three frames of each other's stories.
• You could give students a storyboard with a dialogue and then ask them to imagine or add thought bubbles to show what the people are thinking about each other while they are talking.
• You can create a storyboard with two characters and only include the dialogue from one. Then get your students to write in the missing dialogue from the other person.

I hope you enjoy these ideas and think of others to use with your students. If you'd like to find more activities like these check out my ebook -  20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

My Books:

• Digital Tools for Teachers – Trainers’ Edition V.2
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Collaborative Story Writing for the BYOD Classroom

TaleShip is a really interesting app for developing reading and writing skills in a collaborative and creative way.

Photo by Ari He on Unsplash

The app is based around a common classroom activity in which students write stories together by adding a sentence and passing it on to another writer. The next writer then adds a sentence and either passes it back or passes it to another student. The process continues until the story is finished.

In this app version users create an account and then write the introduction to the story. You can add links to images in the introduction phase too, so this can help inspire other writers. Once the introduction is create you can either make it public, share it through social media
or share it with selective people.

The app works both synchronously and asynchronously and has a text chat window on the side of the interface so students can interact with each other as they build the story.
The app works in the browser so it will run on a laptop or mobile device. This makes it particularly suitable for the BYOD classroom.

TaleShip is a great way to get students writing collaboratively and you can follow it up with some peer correction or get the students to take the stories and enhance and improve them by adding more description and detail.

Here is an example activity I created. Feel free to contribute to the story if you wish.
https://taleship.me/rooms/join/dark-stormy-night-62182317 


You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My eBooks:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers

Best
Nik Peachey