iPads and Sketches in Spanish

Student sketches of Class Story

Last year I wrote a grant for an iPad because I wanted to use a digital storytelling app on the iPad to record the stories for my Spanish 1 students.  The problem last year was that when I received the iPad, I didn't have any Spanish 1 classes that semester.  Therefore I had even one more reason to look forward to teaching Spanish I this fall.

I have been asking/telling stories with my Spanish 1 classes since the 5th day of class.  Today in the last class of the day, I had planned to use the iPad to record a story.  These are the steps of today's lesson.

1. I asked the students to raise their hand if they could draw well.  Three hands shot up so I sent them to the board to "try-out" for the artist job today. (The applying for a class "job" idea came from Ben Slavic at NTPRS this summer.)  One girl was doing a beautiful job but taking a long time to sketch; the boy was looking at the other two girls to see what they were drawing; and the second girl, who got the job for today, drew a recognizable sketch in a few short seconds.  When I told her that she was in charge of making the sketches on my iPad, she was even more willing to help out.

2. I had a basic idea for the story with the focus words: trabaja, es perezoso/es perezosa; and el jefe/la jefa.  I "asked" the story with the students contributing to the actions and places in the story, circled each new sentence, and chose several actors to play the parts of the characters in the story.

3.  My artist helper sketched the story as it was being developed using the Educreations App.

4.  After the story was completed, I put the students in groups of 4.  Each group got 5 mini white boards and had to sketch 5 scenes from the story.  

5.  The groups presented their story in front of the class.  They needed to say at least one sentence to narrate each white board. They were permitted to write their sentences on a paper and use it during the presentation, but only 1 group chose to use a paper during the presentation.  (I'm sure that had a lot to do with the fact that I had circled the sentences and structures so many times when creating the story.)

6.  While the students were sketching and planning their mini presentation in #4 above, I typed the story.  After the presentations, I projected their story on the board.  I read it in Spanish and they read it in English in unison.  We also read a similar story that a morning Spanish 1 class had created to give the students additional repetitions of the vocabulary and structures.

7.  After the students left, I used the sketches that my student made and recorded the story on the Educreations App.  (It's embedded below.  Keep in mind that I have to speak slower at this stage of their learning.)

8.  Every day after school, I post a summary of that day's class activities and upload any documents that I distributed in class and attach any links to websites we visited.  I embedded the Educreations story so both classes are able to access it 24/7.

I was glad to finally use the iPad for its original purpose and hope to continue recording stories throughout the semester.  I want to post the collection somewhere online for my students and the students in the other Spanish 1 classes at my school.  If you have any suggestions on a good site to post them, please send comment below or send me a Tweet on Twitter @sonrisadelcampo.