Digital Storytelling Lesson Description

Students will design and produce a 3-5 minute digital story. Students collect images, select music, and write a first person narrative entitled, “Where I am From.” Working with the instructor, students construct a digital movie illustrating their story using MS Word to write their narrative, MS Power Point to develop their storyboard, and IMovie or Movie Maker to produce their movie.

Subject and grade level

Writing, Technology, 10th grade

Standards

AZ- Arizona Academics Standards• Subject : Language Arts
Subject/ Grade/ Domain : Writing
Grade : Grade 10

Strand 1: Writing Process
Concept 1: Prewriting, PO 1
Concept 3: Revising, PO 1 , PO 2
Concept 5: Publishing, PO 1-3

Strand 2: Writing Components
Concept 1: Ideas and Content, PO 3, PO 5
Concept 2: Organization, PO 2, 3, 6
Concept 3: Voice, PO 2, 3, 4, 5
Concept 4: Word Choice, PO 3

Strand 3: Writing Applications
Concept 1: Expressive, PO 1

USA- ISTE: Profiles for Technology Literate Students (includes NETS for Students)Grade : Grades 9-12, PO 5 and PO 7

AZ- Arizona English Language Learner Proficiency Standards • Strand : WRITING
Proficiency Stage ELL I: 
Area : Writing
Standard : The student will express in writing his or her own thinking and ideas. 
Level : Early Advanced
 Benchmark : Relate messages and short stories by drawing, dictating to an adult, using imitative writing, or writing key, self selected words.

Proficiency Stage ELL II: 
Area : Writing
Standard : The student will express in writing his or her own thinking and ideas.
Level : Early Advanced
 Benchmark : Write 4 to 6 word simple sentences about events or characters from familiar stories read by the teacher.

Objectives

Upon completion of this lesson, the learner will have participated in a variety of writing exercises that guide the learner through the creative writing process and help them to create a polished writing multimedia project.  Students will be able to
Write a personal narrative
Evaluate a peer’s personal narrative
Compose a digital story with images (scanned or copied and credited from the internet), recorded narrative, and soundtrack

Outcomes

The overarching goal of the unit will allow ALL students to draw on their native language and culture to develop a digital narrative while also developing the students' English as a second language skills in both oral communication and media literacy.

The unit will serve as a bridge to help build a respectful community for ALL the students as well as to aid the limited English proficient students to eventually transition into all-English instruction. 

Student Population Description

This lesson is designed for ALL Language Art students attending Flagstaff High School.

Description of the school setting where the lesson was implemented

I am not a teacher and did not have the opportunity to implement the lesson with the Flagstaff High School students therefore this lesson was implemented at the e-learning center at Northern Arizona University.  We had to condense the six-session lesson into approximately 4 hours.  The students are all high-level technology users but not necessarily writers.