Holiday Storytelling With Storybird
Creating and sharing digital storybooks for the holiday season
I can’t think of a more treasured holiday pastime than storytelling. I remember the time when my third-grade teacher told us stories of holiday traditions in other countries. The holiday season prompts any number of learning activities, but I think storytelling lessons are at the top of teachers’ lists. Fortunately, we live in a digital age, where you can utilize any number of digital storytelling platforms, such as Storybird, to motivate your students to write.
Storybird is an online storybook-creation platform that enables students of all ages to read, write, illustrate, and publish stories with original artwork provided by the site. (You can watch a short demo and tutorial on our Storybird resource page.) Here are three reasons why I sing Storybird’s praises:
1. It encourages students to write
Storybird is easy to use and the variety of artwork means that storytellers of all ages and artistic talents can create memorable digital tales. Students will love drafting and sharing their storybook creations, and better engagement means better learning.
2. It’s cross-disciplinary
Storybird can be used in almost any subject. Language Arts teachers can use Storybird to help students practice their writing and improve their knowledge of sequence of events and visualization. Music students can create stories based on the lyrics of their favorite holiday songs.
3. It’s meaningful
Students can upload their holiday stories to the web to share with friends and family. Not only will they want to impress those closest to them, but also the immediacy of online publication creates a sense of pride in most students.
With that said, teachers, I think there are a lot of ways you can use Storybird for holiday storytelling. To illustrate my point, I’ve included a few holiday-themed stories that I found in Storybird’s online community:
Take a look at the following lesson plans, and see if Storybird will inspire you, too:
The Art of Telling a Story
Not Another Storybird Post … OMG It Is!
Storybird
Motivating Students to Create Original Fairy Tales
Using Storybird to Teach Adjectives