Last year was the first time I used Story Kit-this year it is so much easier. I worked out all of the kinks but the BEST part is I have 23 model stories to use with this class. We started our story telling by reading and examining last year's stories and that was so powerful! As we looked at their stories, I recorded what they liked about the stories. This is so powerful because they had ownership of the indicators that we used on the rubric.
As you read the rubric, I have decided to teach dialogue early in the year. I know this may be a little crazy, but the students are really doing a nice job handling the challenge. The reason I chose to teach dialogue early is because the two mentor text that I am using had excellent examples of powerful dialogue. We used: The Summer My Father was Ten and Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street. I highly recommend both of these books and I will use them all year as an anchor in my writer's workshop.
The next thing I changed was incorporating writing goals into their digital story telling. This year's class needs constant reminders that everything they learn builds in writing. After our first published piece, Summer Memories, I had my students write one goal for their next piece of published writing. As you can see below, I added a section to the rubric to have the students' focus on their goal as well as the indicators listed above.
When I passed out the rubric, one students actually said out loud, "Mrs. Caplin you mean I still need to work on strong topic and closing sentences. I thought I was done with that." Oh the joys of learning..............check back later for an update on digital story telling.
