Third Grade Storytellers

This afternoon, the third graders engaged in collaborative storytelling. Their visits to the library were part of the Thursday Afternoon Program and therefore fall outside my traditional curriculum. It's often a time to try something new. I have been having so much fun with the storytelling being done by the first and second graders that I decided to give the third graders an opportunity to flex their storytelling muscles. I used the same Rory's Story Cubes and eeBoo Create a Story card sets as the younger classes, but I brought in a different technology tool for these students. They used Storybird, a digital storytelling tool that provides art as inspiration for stories. 

It was interesting to watch the students choose their storytelling tools.  The technology was not always the main draw. In one class only eight students chose the laptops. My only parameters were that it had to be collaborative, no more than three students in a group, and that no one be left out.  It all worked smoothly!

Here's a snapshot of the afternoon:

Here are some of the students' Storybird stories. They still need to work on grammar and punctuation, but I wanted to keep reading. What about you?

Here are first pages from stories that hold real promise: