Storybird

What is Storybird?

Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. It is a fun, collaborative, storytelling website.

Storybird was designed to allow children to work with parents and friends in creating art-inspired stories to share and save. It is also now a very popular tool to for use by teachers with their students around the globe. Users choose from art hosted on the site and build a story around those images that can then be shared with family and friends. Storybird encourages creativity and is a web tool that supports working collaboratively.

The final product can be printed, watched on screen, or shared in an online library with the world. You also have the option to keep it private on the network.

How to use Storybird?

Step One: Create an Account

• Go to Storybird.com
• Click "Sign up for free"
• Choose "Educator/Teacher"
• Fill in a username, password and email

Step Two: Set Up Your Class

• Fill the class name and the class grade level

Personal page

• Here you can see all works of your students and short information about them

Example

• On this page you can rate the work and post your  comment

Students

• Add accounts of your students or just join exicting accounts

Assignments

Step Three: Create a Story

• To Create a story click the "write" button
• Then select an image
• You can also search images by tags
• Once you find a collection you like select "use this art"
• Choose to create a multi-chapter or multi-page book 
  

                                           

• Here you create your story by drag and dropping art and adding your text

• From here you can add a summary, category or tag you book. When you are ready click the "publish" button
  

Step Four: Read a Story

• Select the "read" button and then choose to read a story or poetry
• Search by category, format or age
  

• Choose a book to read
• Click the "heart" button to like a book, click the "book" button to add a book to your bookshelf
• Follow the artist or author
  

Conclusion

Storybird can be used in a variety of ways to enhance student learning and help students develop concepts. The versatility of Storybird means that it can be used for more than just exploring storytelling. Teachers can adapt lessons around Storybird in a variety of ways that make learning fun and interesting for students. 

The example of the work      Cheeze moon by timur_mars

План-конспект урока по английскому языку

Тема урока: Writing a Story

Класс: 8 А

Тип урока: урок повторения и закрепления изученного материала

Цель урока: формирование умения написания рассказа

Обучающие задачи урока:

• активизировать лексические единицы по теме;
• систематизировать знания учащихся о структуре рассказа;
• совершенствовать навыки работы с ИКТ.

Развивающие задачи урока:

• развивать навыки письменной речи на английском языке;
• развивать критическое мышление, познавательную активность и творческую самостоятельность;
• развитие учебно-организационных навыков и умений (взаимоконтроль, самостоятельная работа).

Воспитательные задачи урока:

• воспитывать культуру общения;
• формировать готовность к сотрудничеству и взаимодействию, совместному решению поставленных задач.

Оснащение: доска, мультимедийный проектор, презентация Power Point, раздаточный материал.

Формы работы: индивидуальная, парная, групповая.

Ход урока

1. Организационный момент.

Приветствие.

- Good morning! Glad to see you! How are you today?

Постановка целей и задач урока.

- On the previous lessons we got acquainted with the on-line service Storybird and today you will create yours own picture books on this site. You will work in pairs. Have you ever tried creating your own stories? Have you succeeded in it?  Also we are going to learn some rules and tips which will help you to write stories easily.

Фонетическая зарядка. 

- On the slide you can the list of  adjectives which may be useful creating stories. Let's read them and translate. 

Now let’s work in groups. Well, what makes a story interesting? I’ll give a word map. Look and in a minute add as many words as you can think of.

 Let’s check. Listen to each of the groups attentively and try not to repeat the words you’ll hear. So, what words do you know related to story structure? 

2. Основная часть урока.

Do you know how many parts a story consists of? What are they?

What tense do we usually use while writing a story?

Do you know any time linkers?

You will be able to answer all these questions after reading writing tips in your copies. Let’s read them and see if your guesses were correct or not. 

 What new facts have you got to know?

As you know, using synonyms and antonyms helps you to make your story much more interesting.

Think of synonyms to these words:

Thrilling – fascinating, catching, exciting, gripping

Smooth – easy, comfortable, calm, quiet

Screeching – strong, severe, sharp, acute

And now think of antonyms to these words:

Slowly – rapidly, fast, quickly

Frantically – calmly, quietly, easily

Dangerously – safely, riskless, lightly, securely

Quickly – slowly, calmly, gently, gradually

Anxiously – easily, peacefully, happily, calmly

In your written stories you should use the past tenses, let's revise the usage of the past tenses. Put the verbs in the right form.

1. In the black forest there_____ the black house. (to be)

2. One day I _____ in the park when I heard a strange noise. (to walk)

3. It ____ a warm summer evening. (to be)

4. It _____ dark. (to get)

5. He_____ a fire when he heard a strange scream. (to make)

6. The boys ____ to the camp. (to go)

7. She _____ very frightening. (to look)

8. When I ____ my eyes I saw a man. (to open)

9. I thought he ____ a mask. (to wear)

10. We _____ a spooky stories when we heard a strange sounds. (to tell)

Look through the table “Study Skills” in your copies and answer the questions :

What should we do to set the scene?

What can we use to make the description more vivid?

Before you start inventing let's discuss together about the plan. What questions are there?

1. When was it?

2. Where was it?

3. What was the weather like?

4. What happened?

5. What happened in the end?

Well, it is time to invent your own stories. Choose a partner to create a Picture book, turn on your computers and start to work on the Storybird. You should create an adventure story using as more adjectives which we repeated today as you can. And do not forget about the rules of the use of verbs in the past tense. The number of pages in your book should be at least 10.

3. Заключительная часть урока.

Good job! We have done a lot today. At home I will ask you to finish your Picture books and be prepared to present them on the next lesson. 

Здесь Вы можете скачать все необходимое для урока:

Презентация
Раздаточный материал