This Is My Story (And I'm Sticking To It)
Colorful, fun story creator teaches beginner grammar and spelling
You may want to present this app to the entire class with a teacher-guided story creation experience, so kids can see this fill-in-the-blank idea at work before they try it on their own. Encourage kids to keep the story going as they think beyond the scripted options to consider why their characters chose to do what they do and what happens next, even after the app's story is complete. For more ideas, This Is My Story (And I'm Sticking To It)'s website has supplemental materials, a teacher chat area, and an email link to provide requests in an area on the site called the Teacher's Lounge.
Continue readingThis Is My Story (And I'm Sticking To It) is a storytelling app for preschoolers that starts kids on the road to understanding simple sentence structure and recognizing some themed sight words. Kids pick a story template from seven colorful, kid-friendly story themes, then tap and drag labeled sticker-like images into the blanks of each page to create an original story. A young voice prompts kids to fill in the blanks for the story. A sentence like, "The (blank) played with the (blank)" becomes "The elf played with the snowman." Finished stories can be saved and will be read aloud by the app, with added sound effects such as laughing on a page with characters who are playing, or slurping on a page where characters are drinking cocoa. Kids can save their original stories to read, listen to, and share with others later. Additional features include a just-for-fun sticker page and a matching activity.
Continue readingKids can learn thematic sight words and early storytelling skills using This Is My Story (And I'm Sticking To It). As kids choose colorful and fun sticker-like images to build the themed stories, they see and hear common sight words like truck and cat. As the stories develop page-by-page, kids practice in simple sentence structure such as "The (blank) said hello to the (blank)." Each of the seven templates has a different theme -- such as holidays, seasons, and school -- with a fun background and related vocabulary. On the downside, they all use the same structure with no additional target skills as kids progress, and more story options would give the app a boost. Still, This Is My Story (And I'm Sticking To It) is an engaging app to introduce early readers and writers to story creation. Throughout the entire exercise, those young kids are picking up subtle grammar and spelling lessons.
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Teacher Reviews
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Conway, AR
This is just a reinforcing side activity. It's not anything I think would be particularly useful for teaching. Kids put stickers in their corresponding shapes and hear the words repeated via audio, which is good reinforcement. But they aren't really creating anything, just putting words into sentences whose sense is debatable.
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