My Story: A writing and publishing app

My Story: A writing and publishing app 

In my lesson plan first grade students will use the My Story app to write and publish and opinion piece of writing.  The topic is My Favorite Flower.  The writing topic isintroduced in class through the presentation of a bouquet of flowers and a whole class discussion of the various types.  The students will then open the My Story app on their Ipads to write about which flower is their favorite and why.

They  begin by picking their profile from the authors page  and then choose the add book tab.  After titling the book they start creating.. On the first page they pick the book image and begin.  Each page has a green box for the text and a picture or image box.  The students will write one sentence or idea on each page and then click the add a page button.  After doing this several times their app will look something like this.  When they have finished their writing, they click on the green done button and all is saved in a book format.

When the student is finished the book can be edited, read or shared, with email,twitter and facebook sharing options included.,  My Story is integrated with Dropbox so the teacher can view all of the students books

.TPAK Framework This lesson requires the use of an ipad and the My Story app and so it gives the student a hands on interaction using technology to create and publish their own book.As the students create their  book they  practice expressing an opinion and supporting it with three different  ideas.In doing this they are  working towards the 1st grade Common Core writing standards. The lesson is taught using VARK ( visual --seeing the flowers; auditory--hearing a finished story; read/write--the creative writing they undertake ; Kinesthetic--the handling of flowers) and various cognitive strategies such as scaffolding and apprenticing . The lesson plan creatively weaves the three parts of the TPAK framework into its design.

SAMR  This lesson moves beyond the Substitution stage of the SAMR  framework into the Augmentation and Modification levels.  The lesson requires the use of an Ipad, and the My Story app but the content of the writing lesson is similar what might be done on paper. The illustrating and publishing aspect of the lesson is where it moves out of  Augmentation and into Modification.  The opportunity for the students to see their work as a book and the ability for teacher to see all the work in a Dropbox account, to publish the students work on the school Facebook page or to email it to a parent demonstrates an enhancement to learning

Link to full lesson plan:

https://docs.google.com/a/pacificu.edu/document/d/1znaZPBgoHtM_gEG3ozLnwu6K_2p1Z028C9Ar9uY6h2c/edit?usp=sharing