Tag: writing

Using Voicethread for Writing Ideas and for Peer Marking

Google Docs, Literacy, Superheroes, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on20 Comments on Using Voicethread for Writing Ideas and for Peer Marking

In the past week or so our literacy work has focused on a short sequence from the comic Spiderman #1. Our Superheroes topic is going well and in this post I explain how we have used Voicethread as a creation tool, a writing scaffold and as a way to do peer marking.

We began with the sequence in the comic where Peter is attending a science fair at a local school and is bitten by spider that has been zapped by one of the radiation machines on show. I wanted the short 5 panel sequence to be the focus of an extended narrative. I liked the tight focus on a few moments and the action and comic imagery would really help us to write some interesting narrative.

To begin with we made some notes about the short sequence as a whole class, mainly key words, things that just jumped out from the images and from the facial expressions of Peter.

Notes about Peter Parker being bitten

The next step was to import the five panels from the comic you can see in the above image into Voicethread. I just used a screen capture tool and created some separate image files for each. The Voicethread was to be a collection of first ideas. At this early stage of the writing process I think Voicethread plays it’s hand superbly.

The children have the opportunity to say their ideas aloud. To articulate, listen back, correct and re-articulate very easily. All of the children in the year group worked on writing and recording ideas for the Bitten! sequence and as you know they are privy to all of the comments from their peers in real time. We used the vocabulary above as a stimulus throughout this early task.

Voicethread Ideas 2

After sharing literally hundreds of narrative ideas for the sequence, the children were put with a writing partner. Often we focus on writing in solitude but I think the support and insight children can get from working together is hugely rewarding. They get to see how someone else might approach the same piece of writing.

I modelled the up-levelling or improvement of some simple starter sentences for each of the panels. We worked together as a class to extend and improve on them using the language already collected. The children used Google Docs for their work and I encouraged children to also have open the Voicethread of ideas that we had created. The 5 panels acted as 5 simple paragraph changes. In this step the children are using Voicethread as a source of ideas and as a writing scaffold. They listened and read back the comments others had left and I think found these really useful in kick-starting their work.

Up levelling

As we were working in Google Docs I dipped into their work as they were busy writing. I have written before about how this is less obtrusive than looking over their shoulder or taking their books off of them. I added a header to the Google Doc and then used CTRL+M to add a named and dated comment. I would back this up by a quick chat with the pair if needed to ensure they would act on my advice and feedback.

Marking Bitten

The children had of course shared their Document with me and their writing partner. In my Docs home screen I used the star label to show which Docs I had marked and which I hadn’t. You can read some more ideas for marking with Google Docs in this blog post.

As part of the writing process I explained we would be publishing some to the class blog. I wanted the feedback from the blog to be part of the improvement process for the children. I think that if you plan to publish examples of work in this way, and the kids know this before they begin, you are not just bolting it on afterwards. The children know that the blog readership will be their audience.

We were able to publish 80 percent of the work from the class, those that didn’t were just unfinished. The comments that we received were fantastic and greatly encouraging for the children involved. We would revisit these later in the process.

Blog comments

Although the children have a finished piece of work at this point we are only part of the way through the writing process I had planned and this is where we turned back to Voicethread again. (We kept a printed copy of this first draft.) I have often said that the use of PDFs in Voicethread is overlooked. Clearly the use of images and video is very engaging, but adding PDFs is really useful functionality.

I did two things before exporting the children’s work from Google Docs. Firstly I added their names next to the title of the work. I knew from who shared it with me who the owner was, but as a plain PDF it would be missing that. The second thing was to increase the size of the text so that it was clearly visible in Voicethread.

Voicethread allows you to zoom in to text or images, but when you need to use the pen highlighter it zooms out. With a full page PDF the writing can sometimes be too small to see. Ensuring the text size is set as high as possible is really important if you want to take advantage of the pen tool.

Voicethread pen

Once this was done I exported all of the Docs as PDFs (no need to worry about the file names as you added their names to the text already) and imported these into a new Voicethread. I noticed that some of the pages were jumbled, in other words if a piece of work was over 2 pages these pages were split. Naturally you want them next to each in Voicethread – watch out for that, however it is easy to move pages about from the upload screen.

Saying that, it is hard to see from the thumbnails which belong together – maybe that is something for Voicethread to work on. Either a magnify function on the upload page for each thumbnail or better assurance PDFs will stay in the correct order.

Once the Voicethread was ready to go I asked each pair to record an audio comment of one of them reading out their own work. This is a simple step you can take to allow all of the children in the class to access the different pieces of writing. If they struggled reading it, there was an audio version! We talked to the children about adding comments and feedback and I stuck to a simple 2 stars (things they liked) and 1 wish (something to improve) which we have used before. I encouraged them to use the pen tool to highlight words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that they were referring too and this proved very successful.

Improve2

Interestingly the process of reading your own work out aloud and recording it made the children realise where they could improve their own work.

The final step was to revisit their original writing and complete the editing process. It is sometimes hard to find time to review work in light of comments but is essential in helping children improve. Those with blog comments on their work were encouraged to look at what was written. Everyone had numerous comments on their own work as part of the Voicethread – they went back to their Google Doc and made alterations and improvements based upon the feedback from me, their peers and the wider audience on the blog.

I went to every single pair and asked them to talk through some of the alterations they had made and guided them to focus on anything they had overlooked.

In short the sequence looked like this:

  1. Reading the focus sequence
  2. Gathering initial vocabulary and feedback
  3. Voicethread of sequence – children add ideas
  4. Writing begins – using above resources
  5. Writing is published to the class blog and uploaded to Voicethread
  6. Voicethread of work – children add feedback
  7. Edit in light of teacher, blog and peer comments

This was over the course of about a week and half to two weeks. This sort of timescale really allows you the space to establish some quality and immerse you and the class in the piece of work. After all, we were only writing about a very short moment in time.

It may have only been a few fleeting, painful moments for Peter when he was bitten, but we found this extended writing and review process really successful.

Sealife Action Text

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Learning a short piece of text has proven really valuable to many of our Year 5s who find it harder than others to begin their writing.

An action text is a short, simply written, piece  that allows us to add actions to represent the words. We would learn the text and the actions as a whole class, inviting the children to suggest memorable actions for the major words. We had lots of fun doing this and even came up with a “link” action (hands clasped together) to show the connectives in the writing, such as “and” and “before”.

I invited the children to create little doodles above the words to help them remember them too. Here are some examples.

Action Text 1

Action Text 2

During some lessons we worked on taking some of the simple sentences and improving them by adding some more descriptive vocabulary or more detail. The text we used for Sealife was a general piece of description that could be used in other ways – a flexible set of ideas.

We had been looking at scuba diving underwater signals and the children have been developing their own. This worked nicely with our action text as we used some of them to reinforce some of the language in the passage.

You might wonder if learning one piece of text leads to lots of the same pieces of work. However we spend just as much time extending and personalising the text as learning it verbatim. Those more confident writers stamp their personality on it and we tend to see glimpses or phrases from the Action Text in their work.

Some children just find it very difficult to begin a piece of writing, draw upon example ideas or even remember modelled writing from the teacher. We have found that the children needing the most support have recalled this Action Text really easily giving them a great starting point for their writing.

Using Endless Ocean (Wii) in the Classroom – Making a Class Aquarium for Descriptive Writing

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I remember when I first explained on Twitter we were doing Sealife as our next topic I was sent a link to this beautiful footage of the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. Put down what you were doing, take your shoes off and watch this for four and half minutes.

This main tank, the ‘Kuroshio Sea’, holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and is the largest in the world. Beautiful footage.

After a few weeks of working with the Wii game Endless Ocean in our literacy unit I planned for a descriptive writing task using an “Aquarium View” of one species. Here is what I did to set it up.

(I have the Wii projected onto our SMARTBoard, audio through speakers etc)

  1. When the children discover a new or interesting species that would make a good written piece of description, make a note of where it is on your map. Press 1 on the remote to call up the map. I used the Lionfish and the Red Stingray.
  2. For your writing task move the boat back to the exact spot of the species you are interested in and dive down.
  3. Set up the task by swimming to the creature, highlighting and selecting it using the A button. In Endless Ocean when you selected a creature in this way you zoom into a first person view and focus on it wherever it moves. You don’t have to control the view it will stay locked on until you manually move away by pressing B on the remote.
  4. This is our “Aquarium View” the fish moves around and we can remain watching and exploring everything to do with it, without the distraction of moving the diver or trying to follow it.

  5. Once we had our “Aquarium View” ready I worked with a small literacy group and spent some time encouraging to the children to just quietly watch the creature move and begin to think of words that might describe it’s behaviour. “Ripples” was a lovely one for the Red Stingray. We gathered these ideas on small pieces of card and had them scattered on the carpet in front of the IWB.
  6. In addition to the creature’s movement we described the general physical appearance and also more descriptive words for it’s movement – so the Red Stingray “elegantly ripples“. Reading the factfile for the creature in the game also allowed us to glean some more ideas. (Click on the name once in “Aquarium View”)
  7. After some teacher led vocabulary work I set the children off to independently create some short sentences describing the creature. I supported some individuals in this small group at the point of writing.

The children enjoyed writing in this way, they were regularly looking up at the creature in front of them and then returning to their description. It is not surprising really because we saw the same reaction to writing when we used Google Earth to offer children a visual map for their writing.

Controlling the diver and playing the game has been a great motivator and way to engage the children, but this more passive use of the media is equally effective. Due to the accurate, high quality representation of the sealife in the game we were able to just sit back and watch – our very own class aquarium.

Using Myst 3 for Descriptive Writing

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It has been about a year since I began writing about using Myst 3 in the classroom. The last literacy unit of the term saw our Year 5 classes make their first forays into using the game and the second time we have used it in support of writing.

I love to use games in the classroom to support and inspire learning – at their best they are richly engaging and hugely motivating. This year we repeated much of the successful ways of introducing the game slowly; hooking the children into the narrative well before we switched on any computers.  Myst 3 has such a rich narrative and back story this is not difficult to achieve.

One of the major differences in our class work this year was that I decided to take the more conventional route of working on descriptive writing. Last year we completed some great transactional text in the form of game guides. This year I began a simple task of improving on some simple sentences shared in a Google Doc for my students. The kids made such a good start to this that I invested the rest of our time on expanding on what we began.

Here is an example of one of my student’s work in Google Docs – you can see that I added a table of key vocabulary from the Myst narrative.

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The smiley face and marking is something I added as the child progressed with their work. I used Insert>Comment in Google Docs for this (Shortcut: Control+M) These comments are useful in three ways:

  1. Coloured to stand out and be distinct from the rest of the child’s work.
  2. Timestamped automatically so that commenting and marking can be kept a track of.
  3. Named automatically so that a comment belongs to a particular user.

Have a look at my Marking work in Google Docs blog post for more ideas about common assessment of work in this way.

The second comment as I am sure you have realised is from the student who has responded in kind and let me know the changes she has made since my comments. Additionally she refers to some peer assessment that the class did in pairs to help review and improve their writing.

Alongside this work we helped the Year 2 children with their Myst unit – similar in our approach to last year but with different outcomes. The Year 2 teachers wanted their children to create some poetry based around their seaside curriculum unit. The Year 5s acted as Myst guides and helped the younger children explore the island in more detail, develop vocabulary and language collections and ideas for their seaside poems. Once these poems were completed we supported them in some simple Photostory work as a performance of the poems.

It has once again proven to be a hugely successful and engaging unit both within the remit of our own writing and in the process of supporting the younger children to engage with the game as well.

10 Digital Writing Opportunities You Probably Know and 10 You Probably Don't

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On Thursday I finally had some time to sit with our Key Stage 2 (junior) literacy coordinator and talk about how technology can support writing outcomes for the Primary Framework for Literacy.

It was a meeting all about ideas (my favourite) and we discussed the best ways that technology could support the process of writing and drive the eventual outcomes. In this post I have included a list of 10 literacy/writing tools or outcomes that, in my opinion, teachers should currently be aware of. Many of them are basic yet still powerful tools in the classroom that support children’s writing. They are in no particular order.

In addition I have also included 10 alternative tools that either offer a different perspective on digital writing or are a little known tool, that may have huge potential in the classroom. Not everything is free nor is it online – but the list will hopefully provide food for thought when you are looking at your next non-fiction or narrative unit with your class.

1 – Photostory – in my opinion one of the simplest and yet most powerful tools for primary literacy. I particularly appreciate the linear structure of the software, the ease with which you can incorporate speaking and listening and the quality of the multi-modal outcome.

2 – Powerpoint – I have never been a fan but PPT does offer a wider range of tools a functionality then some other presentation software. Children could create a non fiction text with linked contents and glossary – including the use of film and audio. There are of course heaps of online equivalents including 280 Slides, Zoho and Google Docs.

3 – SMART Notebook – in the same family as Powerpoint of course with the same sense of a non-chronological text could be created with it. This has proven a very effective tool for the children in our school as they have been watching Notebook in action since 2003. The children enjoy the ease with which you can work with the object based interface. A recent example of use in Year 4 in our school saw the children using screen capture to find, within a text, examples of language features and they then authored their own linked information texts.

comparison1

4 – MovieMaker – (and Apple equivalents of course) simple and in the same boat as Photostory – it just gives you the complete package of allowing children to incorporate film into their texts. We have used it to create responses to the Aiden Gibbons film The Piano. The children added text, spoken word, soundtracks, film, still images (+effects) transitions etc.

5 – Word Processor – simple word processed documents could be done in Word or Google Docs. This year we have completed an instruction text on how to create and play a game in Sploder.

6 – Short Podcast – using Audacity or other recording/podcasting software children could create short scripted podcasts. They could be part of revision or even as an example of a balanced argument. The audio could then be imported and used in other applications.

7 – Film – there are lots of simple mini digital video cameras available now and ideally with lots in the classroom the children could create their own original films. They could present an interview, part of a story, balanced argument or an explanatory text for a different topic. We are looking at getting as many Flip Videos as we can get our hands on.

8 – Voicethread – still not that widely used, but one of the most important speaking and listening tools I have used in the classroom. Films, images or text can be explored – comments can be added via text, webcam, audio or even by mobile phone (!) – as the pupil is adding their comment they can also use a pen tool to highlight the feature they are discussing. Children could use Voicethread to model interview questions, structure responses to a narrative or to share ideas for story starters as we have done earlier this year. The collaborative feature provides them with a pool of ideas and support from their peers. Huge potential.

9 – Kar2ouche – you have to pay to use this but our Year 6 teachers have had great success with Kar2ouche to support their Macbeth work. Scenes can be storyboarded from a bank of illustrated graphics, audio can be recorded directly in or layered on top from a resource bank. There is room for the children to write a fuller narrative for the scenes or just to add speech bubbles. In the same category as Photostory due to the storyboarding but much more powerful.

10 – Myths and Legends Story Creator 2 – a free online version of Kar2ouche that focuses on a specific story type. Classes can have unique logins and they can record audio and build scenes from a set of graphics, their own images can be imported. A great alternative to Kar2ouche and perfect for the Myths and Legends unit.

No doubt that not much of that is new to many of you, however I hope that the next 10 alternative tools gives you further food for thought and something to explore for next terms’ writing units. It is an exciting time to be encouraging young children to enjoy writing as there are so many free tools that engage and take a different perspective on it all. 

1 – Google Earth stories – the imagery presented to us in Google Earth provides a rich platform to inspire and develop stories. Work could be written into the placemarks or indeed media created elsewhere could be embedded within them like we have done. Information text located in the correct context would of course be ideal, for example an explanatory text about the features of a river system using the River Nile as it’s location or indeed the Valley of the Kings as the location for information in an Egyptian topic. Why not do a WW2 evacuee story and find a train station in a large city and then follow the line out into the countryside? Endless contexts for writing.

2 – Wordle – I thought this little tool would be great to analyse written stories in the same way Steve Kirkpatrick has done with his class. A Wordle could be a great way to introduce a text – exploring what is emphasised to help understand the type of writing it is taken from. Is it instruction, explanation – how can you tell? Another idea is that the children create a poem as a Wordle, it would certainly be challenging the form of conventional poetry.

3 – PicLit – this great creative writing tool allows you to drag vocabulary onto an image. Although you cannot upload your own images, the picture gallery is well stocked with inspiring pictures to explore. Children could try and tell the story within the picture or create some poetry in response to the image. PicLits can be saved, emailed and used elsewhere.

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4 – Tag related search – using tag related searches can help children to understand the family of vocabulary that they could use. The relationships we generate between common words could be tapped into by a class to not only explore the images from Flickr, as in Tag Galaxy, but also broaden their vocabulary for written work. Don’t just focus on the images but explore the language too.

5 – Woices – place a recorded piece of a story audio on a map, combine the pieces into a route or journey. Woices will allow you to create a geotagged story or journey with audio being the main medium. Work could be narrative based or a simple recount of a recent class trip or journey into the local area. More informative tourist guide type outcomes could be scripted and added to the correct locations on a map.

6 – Cartoon strip – Tools such as Strip Generator and Make Beliefs Comix give children the opportunity to quickly generate short cartoon strips. The simplicity allows them to quickly explore aspects of narrative and speech as they take seconds to figure out how to use. I used Make Beliefs Comix today with my class to support their understanding of direct speech. Thanks to willie42 and MrKp for first suggesting these, we had a good lesson.

7 – Museum Box – Thanks to smilin7 for suggesting this one. Museum Box is a tool from the makers of the Myths and Legends resource above. It “provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box.” Children can add text, files, video, audio and images into the box and it looks like a really unique way to explore an event or historical figure. It would be good to help the children explore characterisation – what would we put in the box to help us understand Aunt Sponge? I look forward to exploring this more in the future.

8 – Textorizer – This is an online tool that allows you to upload an image, add text and then the image is recreated using the writing. It would be a good exploration of imagery and written text – perhaps a short poem created over series of lessons with a bold or distinctive image as a starting point. Then textorized as a final emalgamation of text and imagery. Thankyou to nzchrissy for pointing out this one.

9 – Bookr – I have always liked the pimpampum applications and in fact one of the very first blog posts I wrote was using Bubblr their comic strip tool. Bookr is from the same family and it is very easy to create a simple book using Flickr images, add some text and then publish.

10 – Adventure Island – Another resource that I discovered through Twitter, the thanks going this time to helenrf, Adventure Island provides a platform to write a reader defined adventure story. “Pupils create challenges and puzzles for the visitor to solve. As the visitor travels around a created Island, descriptive writing for each area encourages them to explore further. Will they be able to survive, and leave the Island, or will they remain forever … trapped?” This resource is based around a Y6/7 transition unit on Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo but could be used detached from that context – there is plenty of supporting ideas and tips on how to use it with a class.

Phew! It is always good to get all of those ideas buzzing in your head down in a blog post and I hope that there is something here for you to consider next time there is a writing outcome in a literacy unit. Throughout a writing unit I look to use at least one application that encourages speaking and listening, and refining of recorded speaking as a precursor to writing. I wouldn’t use these tools in isolation and some compliment each other very well.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it certainly helps to illustrate the breadth of opportunity currently available to explore literacy in a digital form. As always, please let me know your thoughts, what you might add and what classroom experiences you have had of using them.