Plotagon

Plotagon is another graphic organiser but with this one you can actually create short animated clips, films. Instead of writing about its incredible potentials, why not watch my video from Plotagon's website.

It is great, isn’t it? I cannot believe it is free. You don’t even have to register, but if you do you have access to more characters and scenes, and you can buy more for about £1. This is a great app for anybody. It is a great tool for shy students to open up. In terms of pronunciation the app has some limitation, the stress isn’t always correct, but it is OK for a robotic voice and it doesn’t take away from the fact that you can create amazing videos with this tool. On the other hand you can add subtitles, this way you can create a reading exercise for your young learners. Also, creating videos is not time consuming at all. You can finish them literally in minutes. Once you downloaded the app, you do not need Internet connection, it saves it to your hard drive or Ipad. If you have an account you can access your drafts from any platform to edit it.

Here is the original tutorial from the creators of Plotagon:
Original tutrial from the creators of Plotagon from Vimeo website

Website

www.plotagon.com

How to create stories online?

In the next two post I’ll present two incredible apps that will definitely engage all of your students from 5 to 99. With these graphic organisers sts can develop their visual literacy and presentation skills, as well. Learner who are visual will love to use them; the act of making and watching the end products will increase their engagement and deepen the newly acquired piece of language. A big advantage of both apps that those who cannot draw can also create creative, enjoyable stories in literally minutes.

StoryboardThat

There are different scenes categories to choose from, from town, through school and work, to historical and futuristic. You can choose characters from basic, cultural, historical (1600-1950) to monsters, myths and animals. You can also add different accessories to your characters and can colour your character’s hair, skin, eyes an outfit. You’ve also got different shapes, numbers, and arrows to choose from (good for practicing numeracy skills). You’ll see it is only limited by our imagination. And probably for us, language teachers the most important feature is the speech bubbles, where you can add some text to use the target language and make the slides into a small story books, which can be an incredibly motivating tool for sts who don’t like practicing their writing skills.

For a free account you can make 2 storyboards a week and you can choose a 3x1 or a 3x2 layout. After finishing your storyboard you can save and reuse it, moreover you can edit them anytime so you can adjust them to different levels.  With one click you can make it into a slide presentation or print it in different sizes. The classroom edition and upload function to share it with others is only part of the subscription, but there is a free trial period. 

Here is the websites own tutorial from youtube:

There are different scenes categories to choose from, from town, through school and work, to historical and futuristic. You can choose characters from basic, cultural, historical (1600-1950) to monsters, myths and animals. You can also add different accessories to your characters and can colour your character’s hair, skin, eyes an outfit. You’ve also got different shapes, numbers, and arrows to choose from (good for practicing numeracy skills). You’ll see it is only limited by our imagination. And probably for us, language teachers the most important feature is the speech bubbles, where you can add some text to use the target language and make the slides into a small story books, which can be an incredibly motivating tool for sts who don’t like practicing their writing skills.

For a free account you can make 2 storyboards a week and you can choose a 3x1 or a 3x2 layout. After finishing your storyboard you can save and reuse it, moreover you can edit them anytime so you can adjust them to different levels.  With one click you can make it into a slide presentation or print it in different sizes. The classroom edition and upload function to share it with others is only part of the subscription, but there is a free trial period. 

What can you use it for?

Task A

Simple vocabulary boards

1. Highlight the word by separating it
2. Add picture of the context
3. Add definition of the word, or put it into context
4. Add a dialogue

Task B

Character description

Create character cards while reading.

Task C

Plot diagram

Demonstrate the story you read.

Task D

Teaching cause and effect or antonyms and synonyms

Task E

Know, Want,( How), Learn (what you Know, what you Want to know, (How will you get the information), what you Learned)

Definitely worth spending some time discovering it, after that it’ll take only minutes to create your slides I guarantee!

Webite

www.storyboardthat.com

Storylineonline, StoryboardThat and Wordjuggle

Reading with stars

I would like to dedicate the first post to my new student Kitti, my new student, who goes to Grade 1 in the UK, but has been living in the country only for 2 years. I help her read and understand better as we share the same mother tongue. I was looking for a story she would be interested to read. STORYLINEONLINE is a great website if you are looking for a good story with audio and subtitle but it provides more. The stories are read by famous actors like Betty White or James Earl Jones, but some of them like Amanda Bynes and Elijah Wood might also be known by teenagers as well. The fact that the stories are read by professional actors has many advantages like authentic pronunciation, mmimics, acting, which all help understanding. We can also enjoy the original illustrations or animated cartoons while listening to the story, which not only increses the fun factor but also enhances meaning. The stories 5-10 minutes long, and address different issues a child can face. I chose Guji Guji because:

• it has a very simmilar story line to Ugly Duckling, so the child can rely on her knowledge, of course children are not bothered by not knowing all the words but this helps her understand the story
•       Robert Guillaume’s brilliant performance (sound of the bad crocodile, laughter, wiggling movement, reading in a slower pace) and the expressive, animated cartoon adds so much to enjoy the story, at the same time they also scaffold the understanding of the story
• it is only 5 minutes long so it’s  just long enough to engage the children and later read the story by themselves.

1. I showed her pictures of a duck and crocodile and asked questions about the animals, so she could tell me what she already knew about the animals. 

• What is the name of the animal in the picture?
• Have you seen a duck/ crocodile before? Where?
• What colour is a duck/ crocodile?

 2. We continued with watching the story of Guji. Because of the reasons mentioned above the child does not need further help at this point to get the gist of the story.

After we listened to it I asked her what she enjoyed the most about the story. 

4. Then we focused on some vocabulary items- features of the animals. I created some flashcards with WORDJUGGLE (feather; beak; webbed feet; nest; lake; pointed teeth; blue-gray skin; sharp claws).  I typed the word on one side and left the other side (definition) empty. We discussed the meaning and asked her to draw it on the empty cards. Later we could use them for a matching exercise or separate them as features of the 2 animals.

5. With StoryboardThat she could create a picture of an environment where a duck/ crocodile lives (with some of my help, she is not computer literate yet).  At this point she had to produce some  spoken language using the new vocab items, but also the name of colours and shapes.

6.  We did some loud reading from the beginning of the story. As the recording can be stopped and rewound, children can listen to a sentence before they would read it.

I will dedicate some more time for Wordjuggle and Storyboard as both websites has an incredible potential that I could not exploit enough in this lesson plan.

Websites

www.storyonline.net
www.wordjugge.com
www.storyboardthat.com