Grade 7s created stories from pictures and turned them into videos

I love thinking of different ways to get my classes writing and seeing themselves as writers and story tellers. I used the following method with Grade 6 and 7 this year, but in this post I will only talk about Grade 7.

I used the following process with Grade 7:

The elements of a good story

As always, our  lesson concentrated on the elements of a good story – characters, setting, a plot, a conflict, and a resolution to the project. We practised this in different ways orally in the lesson.

Tell the story from pictures

Some time ago I downloaded some wonderful Creative Commons stories from the African Storybook website https://www.africanstorybook.org/  . I removed the title and the words, but kept the art and details of the original stories as a Creative Commons requirement. I put the art on to PowerPoints and I numbered the stories. Each student in Grade 6 and 7 chose a number. Their task would be to turn the pictures into their own story and make sure they included the elements of a story. 

Create a video of your story using Screencastify

The Grade 7s then used the Chrome extension,  Screencastify, to narrate their stories and turn them into videos.  

Examples of the stories

1. Original: The Girl Who Could Fly by Ingrid Schechter. llustration - Ingrid Schechter and Amir Bachir António Necas. Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 Source: www.africanstorybook.org

Casseddie’s Big Surprise by Casbru

2. Original: A Hot Saturday by Nathi and David; Translation - Nathi and David; Illustration - Wiehan de Jager Language – English. Creative Commons: Attribution 3. Source www.africanstorybook.org

A Hot Saturday by Ethkau

The Hottest Saturday by Geolev

How to embed a Screencastify video into a blog

My Grade 6s have loved working with Screencastify to add narration to the stories they wrote using Google Slides. The problem came when we wanted to embed the narrated stories into our blogs.  However,...Screencastify to the rescue. It is all very possible.

This information comes from the Screencastify website.

Embed a recording into a website
https://help.screencastify.com/article/203-embed-a-recording-into-a-website 

If a recording is saved to your Google Drive or published to YouTube, it is possible to embed it into a website or blog post. If a recording is only saved locally, it's not possible to embed it anywhere, as the recording is not hosted anywhere online.

How to embed a recording from Google Drive:
1. Go to your Google Drive
2. Navigate to your "Screencastify" folder, or wherever the video you want to embed is located
3. Right click on the file and click Share
4. Click Get shareable link and choose your privacy settings
5. Click Done
6. Double click the file to open it
7. Click the icon in the top right hand corner of the screen
8. Click Open in a ne  window
9. When the new window loads, click the icon again
10. Click Embed item
11. A window will pop up with the HTML code that you can copy and paste into your website or blog

Here is an example:

We have done this a few times in class, but I think it is a good idea to keep a record of the process.