Sean Banville's Blog

My StoryMaker.com

Perhaps my favourite classroom tool of the past year is My StoryMaker from the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh. It’s great fun and has never failed to entertain me or my students – always the sign of a good activity. Most importantly, it really gets students thinking about language and focuses them on producing creative, quality work.

What is it?

My StoryMaker lets students choose their story’s characters, setting and certain objects. Students start by writing their name. They then choose their main character, the general theme of story (love, making friends, travel…) and a third variable (who the main character falls in love with, what the main character wants to find, etc.). This is usually a lot of fun for the students as they have to agree on the basics of their story.

With these three things chosen, My StoryMaker gives students the title of the story, such as:

• The Dinosaur Who Made Friends With The Fox
• The Boy Who Fell In Love With The Mermaid
• The Girl Who Wanted The Cheese
• The Ghost Who Traveled To The Desert

I used it this week and as usual the students collaborated brilliantly and focused on their language and story. Even the most reticent students eventually quitened and applied themselves to the task (10 minutes of moaning followed by 35 mins of concentrated effort). I usually put students in pairs to share one computer – that way they have to work together to create their story. This gets them sharing ideas, discussing grammar and spelling and taking pride in their shared efforts. I can’t remember any other activity in my career as a teacher where students have worked together so totally focused and lost in their activity for 40 minutes – and still continued after I left the classroom.

My Students

My students are in their late teens/early twenties but they loved the characters and the story titles.

I’m in my mid-40s and so did I.

My students are also Arabs, who have little formal tradition of writing stories but a very long history of narrating them. The fact they were so interested in My StoryMaker leads me to believe it would work incredibly well with students more used to writing.

Fun

Once the title and characters are chosen, the fun begins/continues. There is a whole story to write with as many pages as time and imagination permit. A small green arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the page moves the story on to the next page.

Students write their story in the dialogue box. They can click on objects to the right of the box and introduce them to the story. Of course they have to write about why the objects are there and what part they play in the story. Clicking on a character or object activates three mini menu wheels from which students can let their character interact with other characters and objects. The menus also let the characters do something or change their emotions. The menus provide a lot of useful vocabulary for lower-level learners and provide a welcome aid to move the story forward if the students run short of ideas. Selecting any options in the menus automatically puts the related text in the dialogue box. (The cleverer students will learn this is a good way of having the story written for them )

Why I like My StoryMaker so much:

1. Students love it.
2. It is incredibly intuitive and easy to use.
3. It encourages independent work – Many students have given me new stories they’ve written because they enjoyed writing them.
4. It focuses students on writing a real story – the visual aids really inspire them.
5. The end-product makes the students want their language to be more accurate.
6. Students really want me to help them with ideas, language and correction.
7. It totally engrosses students in producing written English.
8. Students have a lovely colour story to read, add to their writing portfolio and show people.
9. It creates situations where there is language students need and do not know. This is an excellent and authentic opportunity for dictionary work. The printed story provides a record for students of that new vocab in context. It is likely they will remember it the more times they read it.
10. The stories they write can be shared with other students – Once students have written their own story, they are genuinely interested in reading the work of other students.
11. The stories can be built into a classroom library and read again to revisit vocabulary and grammar.
12. My StoryMaker is great for incorporating into work with tenses.
13. It really allows me to facilitate student learning. I spend my whole time listening to students and helping them fill gaps in their understanding.
14. Students really want to do as well as they can.
15. My students say they want to take it home and make stories with their little brothers and sisters.

There is another amazing story maker I came across a while back called ZimmerTwins. Might write about that later – Will take it into the classroom in the next week or two.

PS – My StoryMaker doesn’t open in certain versions of Internet Explorer. It has no problems with Firefox.