Using Seusville With your Students!

Being able to write your own story using proper words and spelling is a main component that children must learn in the primary grades. The site of Seusville would be geared towards a grade two level within the subject of language arts and the topic of writing. I would have my students access the site to the storymaker link and allow them to have the chance to create their own story! A lot of beginner writing is done within students personal journals, or language arts portfolios. Within the writing topic they must learn about stages of writing such as pre-writing, drafting, editing, publishing, etc. However, as a future teacher and through past experience I feel that you should allow your students to have the freedom to write creatively and spontaneously as well. You should not put the pressure on them everytime and say this writing piece you are beginning right now will be published, marked, and posted on the bulletin board for everyone to see. You want the students to have the chance to work on several writing drafts, and then allow them the free choice to publish the ones they feel could be the most successful, and by using Seusville it is a great way to get your students thinking and to bring out their creative side!

Within Seusville of the storybook maker, you as the student choose the characters, scenes, music, story title, and text for your story. This is almost like a pre-writing stage because you are starting off with the basis of your story at the beginning by choosing your characters and title, and eventually you have the chance to write your own text. Because this is writing where children have the freedom and choice on the computer to write about what they want, they are able to be creative because there are no set guidelines or rules. I would have my students access the site and begin to make their story, and eventually begin to work with pairs by collaborating ideas together and sharing stories with one another. I even made a few stories myself on this site and it was great being able to brainstorm ideas of what you wanted the characters to say and what type of story line you wanted to use. I also liked adding in the music and backdrops because it made the story more colorful and fun, and I feel that young students would feel the same way!

To finish up this activity on the computers, I would have my students return to their desk, and in their learning logs I would have them create a story on paper much like they did on the computer. They would draw three scenes with charactes included, and then writing at the bottom of what the characters were saying. Then, in groups everyone would have the chance to share the story that they created, perhaps it could be incorporated into centers by the sharing of their stories in the learning logs.

I feel that this site would benefit my students ability of writing, because it gives them the perspective of the first stages of creating a story. You must choose a title, characters, a story line, etc. The music and backdrops are just extra added fun within the site, but the main component is to allow them to brainstorm ideas for their own story to create instead of always reading others that have already been created. By working in pairs on the computers, it allows for the students to collaborate ideas together and learn from one others creativity and use that for further writing tasks within the classroom. I also think that by having them create their own story on paper, they can use ideas from the story on Seusville and what they learned within the site and incorporate it into the new story that they are creating. In this format, they are then relating technology to classoom acitivites and lessons!