Write Holiday Stories

Your students can use WriteReader to create imaginative stories about the holidays, or personal narratives sharing about their own favorite experiences. These books can be used to celebrate their families and special traditions in their homes. You can pick a class “theme” that they will all write about or let students select their own topics.

Here are some holiday writing  ideas:

• Family Traditions for the Holidays 
• My Family is the Best Because …
• World’s Best Mom/Dad/Sibling
• The Best Holiday Ever
• Their own twist on ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
• A special holiday family recipe
• Adventures of their Elf on the Shelf (or other holiday character)
• A gift they would like to give

Festive Images

The winter holidays image bank categories in WriteReader provide an array of copyright-free images that students can add to their books. They can also use the camera to upload drawings or to personalize their books by adding real photos of their family members, Christmas trees, pets, favorite toys, etc. Students love taking photos of things that are important to them, and their families will love how personal these stories are.

Printing Books

Students love seeing printed copies of their books and will be thrilled to gift a “real” copy of their books to their families for the holidays. Once books are complete, click “Print & Download” to print student books. These can be wrapped and gifted to families for the holidays!

We hope your students and their families will treasure these books for years to come. 

Happy Holidays!

Get Started

Connecting is simple! If you’d like to join, log in to your WriteReader account or get started for free at writereader.com. You can make up to 60 books for free in your WriteReader account.

Next, show your students how to use WriteReader to create books about the winter holiday you celebrate in your country. This can be a class book that you work together to create, like this one from Emma Olsson’s class in Sweden:

Or you can share individual books that students write, even using a Reading Room to share multiple student books.

Adding Images

Students can insert images into their books in a few different ways:

• Use the WriteReader winter holidays  image bank to insert pictures
• Use the search tool embedded in WriteReader to find photos
• Use the camera to take their own photos depicting how they celebrate the holidays

Home Connection!

If you’d like students to use the camera, encourage them to log in to WriteReader on a device at home, then take photos of their holiday decorations and traditions to insert directly into the stories they write at school. You could even make it an “at home” project to write a book about family holiday traditions.

Share!

Once your books are finished, it’s time to share! Post about your books on X or Instagram and include a link to your class book or a Reading Room of your students’ books. Be sure to tag @WriteReaderapp and use the hashtag #HolidayBooks23 to find other classes that are sharing. (Please be sure you have parental permission to share books if they include any student photos.)

The more, the merrier, so please encourage other classes to share and join in the holiday fun!

Our favorite places

4th and 5th grade students from Billings Public Schools were asked to think about their favorite places in town, and what makes each of these places special to them. Using strategies learned from the Units of Study writing program, students wrote a persuasive writing piece, sharing what they love about the place they chose and working to convince their audience that they should visit the place.

Publishing

Once the pieces had been written, edited and revised many times, they were ready to publish. With the help of district literacy and technology coaches, the students organized their writing and used WriteReader to type their pieces and add images. Students used image search, image banks and the upload feature in the WriteReader program to add photos of their favorite places.

The books were put into Reading Rooms to share with families and other classes, and printed by a local print company to display at the public library. The students’ books were actually also “on display” in a local news.

Library display and community connections

The original goal was to publish and display these books at a book fair at the Billings Public Library for patrons to view and read.

However, district literacy coaches decided to take this a step further by reaching out to each of the businesses that students wrote about.

Communication between businesses and students

The coaches personally visited each business and hand delivered a copy of the student book. They included a letter explaining the project to the businesses and encouraging them to respond with a letter, email or other token of appreciation to the student author(s) who wrote the books. For safety reasons, any student identifiable information (first and last name, student photos, etc) were removed from the books and businesses were given the literacy coaches’ contact information – no information was shared about the students, their schools, etc.

This was not only an incredibly rewarding experience for the coaches, it was a fantastic way to make positive connections between the schools and business in our local community.

Students displayed some of the notes received from local businesses to share with their classmates.

You made our day!

One local restaurant manager said “We have been having such a hard day. Customer complaints, understaffing, and other issues. Then we read this book and it made us so happy to know that all of it matters and is appreciated! This absolutely made our day and we will hang this in our staff room for everyone to read!”

This reaction was the norm from each of the businesses, and many asked if they could send a note or token of thanks to the student. The literacy coaches gladly collected these items and delivered them to the students, along with a printed copy of their books. The excitement as students saw their printed books for the first time, read the notes from their favorite businesses, and received some fun swag from the businesses, was AMAZING!

Authentic audience

Through this project, students learned that writing matters and helps make connections between people and communities. They learned that they aren’t just writing for themselves, or their teachers, but that writing can be shared with authentic audiences and have a real impact on others. The purpose of their writing was to convince others to visit their favorite places, but they also had the opportunity to share what they love and provide encouragement to these places, as well!

It seems like gamification in learning only has a very short-term effect, and as far as I know, there is no scientific evidence that it in the long term increases either children’s motivation or learning.

Aren’t we fooling the students when coating learning with sugar to make it easier to swallow or covering broccoli with chocolate to make it taste better?

Gamification is empty calories

Gamification is an extrinsic reward whose value quickly diminishes unless the reward is continuously increased. I’ve seen digital learning tools where students have to fly around in a spaceship to catch and spell words, solve math problems and earn points to decorate their virtual room or read lots of books, to beat the class next door or maybe win a reading competition.

In addition to the fact that rewards continually need to be increased to maintain motivation, it can be difficult for many students (and often the academically weakest) to connect and apply what they have practiced in a virtual universe with their everyday life and turn it into useful competencies.

Real engagement and intrinsic motivation

Instead of focusing on points, badges and high score lists, we should develop learning activities and teaching aids for students that motivate and engage them because they can see meaning and value in what they are doing. Below are two projects that I have collaborated on with amazing teachers and their students as well as learning consultants and researchers.

Letter learning and book creation

Learning basic skills should be taught in a way that students see the purpose of what they are doing within a short period of time. It is not enough that kindergartners are told that they have to learn  letters because they have to learn to read in 1st grade. The goals and purpose should be clearly communicated to students.

After an introduction and a few activities for a given letter, students will easily be able to create their own letter book. With the learning tool WriteReader, students (preferably in pairs) in the kindergarten class can easily produce their own multimodal picture books with pictures, sound and text. They can, for example:

• find or take pictures of things that start with the letter
• make sound recordings with the name and sound of the letter
• write both upper and lower case letters
• have children try to write words or phrases for their pictures

The books can then be displayed in the class, printed or collected in a common alphabet book with selected pages from all the students’ books. In this way, even students as young as kindergartners become proud authors of multimodal books with text, images and audio recordings.

Children as library book authors

In several countries around the world I have been involved in a number of projects, which have aimed to not just to turn young students into authors, but into authors of books which were displayed with an attached barcode and borrowed from the local library.

These projects were all build on the following overall structure–but with different local adjustments:

• Introduction, where the participating teachers and librarians became familiar with the learning tool WriteReader.
• Writing phase of 3-5 weeks at the schools, where the students wrote books and finally chose a book to be printed and “published”.
• Events in the libraries, where students handed in, exhibited and read books to each other.
• Exhibition and lending phase, when the books were available in the libraries

It is beyond dispute that these projects have had a positive effect on the students’ motivation and commitment at the same time that they have meant that more families than usual have visited their local library to at least see and borrow their own child’s book.

Some of the projects have managed to attract media coverage and at this link, you can see a news item from a local television station KTVQ in Billings, Montana.

The largest of the projects had over 1,000 participating students, but can easily be scaled down to just a single school or class, where the books are exhibited and borrowed from the school’s library.

For more information about how to organize a bookfair project please go to https://www.writereader.com/boost-literacy-with-a-book-fair-of-childrens-self-created-books/

Game effects without game elements

We know that the best games can enchant and engage children for hours, but can we achieve some of the same effects in education without using gamification, which has no evidence of a positive impact on learning?

The simple answer is YES, but it requires us to pay attention to what is meaningful and motivating for students. In conclusion, I will share two experiences – one primary and one secondary – which are based on writing activities with the writing tool WriteReader.

The first is from a 1st grade classroom at a school in Denmark, where I participated in a lesson where the students were about to create books for a book fair project. When the lesson was over, one boy raised his hand and said “WriteReader is the second best game to Minecraft”. Of course, it’s not always great to be second, but in this case it was a win to realize that the power of creating books and communication through writing can be as motivating for students as one of the most popular games, knowing that WriteReader doesn’t contain any gamification elements.

A week ago I received an email from a teacher in the USA who wrote “My kids kept saying that it was the best iPad thing ever! They kept calling it a ‘game’ which if they think writing is that fun, that’s fine with me!”. This is another excellent example of how a learning tool and activity can be perceived as fun and motivating as a “real” game.

Try it for yourself! Easily create your free WriteReader account at app.writereader.com.

Focus, focus, focus

A Swiss army knife is smart and practical if you are in a situation where you do not know whether you will need to cut, saw, screw, open or file an object.

If you, as a 6 to 8-year-old, find yourself in a situation where you have to write a book in order to learn the written language or get better at it, it is important to use a tool that was created for that particular task – and not have hundreds of other functions which may disturb and remove focus from the core task.

The vast majority of text and utility programs available allow students to choose from more fonts than they can count, use more text and image formatting than they will need in a lifetime, and many other features. It can easily become distracting if the true focus is to help students become better at writing and reading.

The saying of minimalism

The learning tool WriteReader was created with the overall goal of trying to find the minimal and optimal functions needed to motivate and promote children’s early written language development. This means that all tools in WriteReader have been subject to the mantra “less is more” and questions about whether a given function will create learning value and motivation, without compromising on simplicity.

Among other things, this has resulted in students in WriteReader today having access to just one font, two book types, three page types and one way to crop images. These are all limitations that have been carefully considered and selected.

It is naturally tempting to accept many of the good suggestions for new functions that our users continuously come up with. We are extremely careful with that, as in many cases it is not compatible with what our users love about WriteReader, and that is how easy our tool is to get started with and use for their students.

Individual adaptations

Fortunately, since children are different and have various needs and the professional focus can differ from task to task, it was also important that the teachers could make adjustments and individual adaptations.

For example, WriteReader contains a number of reading/writing technologies (e.g. key sounds, speech synthesis, speech-to-text), which teachers can provide access to for students who need that kind of support.

There is also the option of making the tool even simpler by removing, for example, book and page types or image import options that are not relevant to the specific task. There will also be students in the class who, for various reasons, need even fewer opportunities to maintain focus.

So, in addition to the fact that it is important to use the right tool for the task, it is also important to be able to adapt the tool to the individual student’s stage of development and needs.

Introducing WriteReader to young learners

I think it’s important to give students an opportunity to play with and explore a tool when it is first introduced. With WriteReader, I usually gather the students on the carpet and display WriteReader on the board. Together, we explore how to create a new book, investigate the image library, learn how to add text, and discuss topic ideas for their first books. I often introduce the topic of “My Favorite Things”, to keep the theme open-ended and allow students to concentrate on learning the tool. Seasonal stories or books about animals are often popular and easy for students to enter into as well, and are supported by the image banks embedded in WriteReader.

Once we have learned together, I show students how to login (with our little learners on iPads I love the QR code login!) and then give them time to begin their first books while I walk around and support them. I remind them that the books save automatically so even if they don’t finish today they can easily log back in and keep working later. With kindergarten and 1st graders, our goal is usually 4 pages (including the cover) for a finished book.

Student reactions

The reactions from students after using WriteReader have been so fun to experience! Students are WRITING, they are engaged in learning, they are being creative and telling stories and they are having so much fun they don’t want to stop. When I asked a kindergarten class to tell me what they thought about the new tool we learned, they said they gave it two thumbs up! One class started applauding when the lesson finished because they were so excited about WriteReader. And a first grade teacher shared:

My kids kept saying that it was the best iPad thing ever! They kept calling it a ‘game’ which if they think writing is that fun, that’s fine with me!

WriteReader book examples

Here are some examples from little learners I worked with this week.

Click here to read Hudson’s story or here to read James’ story or here to read Madison’s story.

Resources to help you get started with WriteReader

Check out this Wakelet collection for WriteReader tips and inspiration. There are some fun ideas to engage your young learners and motivate them to write using WriteReader! And we would love to see your ideas or hear your students’ reactions to using WriteReader. Share on Twitter or Instagram and be sure to tag @WriteReaderapp!

Traci Piltz
K-3 Technology Integration Specialist
Billings Public Schools

ChatGPT som en tillgång i klassrummet 

Ett nytt spännande område är möjligheten att genom AI skapa inspirations- och promttexter med hjälp av ChatGPT, en stor språkmodell som kan skapa texter utifrån förslag du ger. Du kan enkelt skapa spännande starttexter för dina elever. Dessa kan sedan användas som inspiration när de ska skapa egna sagor.

Skapa egna bilder i WriteReader med AI

En funktion i WriteReader är möjligheten att lägga till bilder i sagor och texter. Detta gör skrivandet ännu mer lustfyllt för barnen, eftersom de kan skapa sina egna bilder för att illustrera sina berättelser. Med hjälp av AI finns det nu också möjlighet att använda Midjourney, eller liknande plattformar, för att skapa passande bilder till sagorna. Midjourney är en plattform som ger möjlighet att skapa digitala illustrationer, animeringar och videor.

Skapa Prompt och bilder i rätt format 

För att skapa bra prompts till Midjourney, kan du börja med att fundera på vad som är mest relevant för din målgrupp. Det kan vara enkla koncept som magi, vänskap eller äventyr, eller mer komplexa idéer som vetenskap eller historia. Försök att hitta bilder som är tydliga och lätta att förstå, samtidigt som de är inspirerande och spännande.

Exempelvis, till denna bilden använde jag prompten: “children with magic easter eggs. In the background a magical forest with lots of animals–arr 3:2” Det sista “–arr 3:2” skriver jag för att få rätt format på bilderna, så att de passar bra in i WriteReader.

Ladda upp dina bilder i WriteReader

När du väl har skapat bilder som passar ihop med texten, är det enkelt att lägga till dem i WriteReader. Du laddar bara ner dina bilder från Midjourney på datorn och laddar sedan enkelt upp dem på rätt plats i din berättelse. På detta sätt kan du skapa fantastiska mallar i WriteReader till eleverna, som utgår från gruppens diskussioner och tankar till en spännande saga.

Exempel från klassrummet 

Här har vi, utifrån våra tankar kring en påskberättelse, använt ChatGPT för att skapa en inspirationssaga. Därefter skapade vi bilder i Midjourney, en till varje sida; framsida, inledning, problem, lösning och slutet. Det blev verkligen inspirerande bilder! Av bilderna skapade vi sedan en tom mall till eleverna. Där fick de bygga sin egen saga till bilderna, det blev ett fantastiskt skrivfokus!

Att skriva till bilder är en kraftfull metod för att utveckla fantasin och kreativiteten hos barn. Med hjälp av WriteReader, ChatGPT och Midjourney, kan du skapa en lustfylld lärandemiljö där barnen kan utforska sina egna idéer och skapa berättelser som är unika och personliga.

Elevexempel

The four language domains

Learning how to sequence story pictures through reading, writing, speaking, and listening tasks supports my MLs in demonstrating comprehension, understanding of the relationship between text and illustration, and expressing their thoughts and ideas smoothly from one event to another. It also helps them organize and understand what they have learned and self-assess their learning. It is a skill that can be found in all content areas and necessary tests or assessments. The WriteReader tools and features allowed me to easily differentiate this lesson for my ML students of all ages and stages. For example, some students used the Voice to Text / Dictation feature to assist with writing their words.

Sharing stories with classmates and family members

The first step to writing our sequencing stories was to add pictures to our new digital books. I asked students to select and add pictures from the sequencing image bank to demonstrate the events they believed would occur throughout the little boy’s day. Once the sequencing pictures were added to each page, students were instructed to type at least two sentences about each event. Students were required to use important transitional words such as: First, Next, Then, Last, and Finally when creating their stories. After completing their writing, students were asked to produce an audio recording on each page, reading their writing. My students were excited to share their finished books about “Tom’s Day” with classmates and as well as send a copy to family members on our digital school communication tool using the WriteReader shareable link feature.

Check out one of our Sequencing Stories by clicking here or at the image above.

Other sequence image bank categories

In addition to the image bank category with the boys’ and girls’ everyday routines, WriteReader also contains sequences of images on how to wash hands and clothes and prepare spaghetti and a pancake.

Besides that, there are sequences of four illustrations about an owl’s school day, birthday and flight. For more information about these 12 illustrations, please read this blog post.

Happy sequence writing!

By Katie Gardner, ESL teacher, Knollwood Elementary School, Salisbury, North Carolina, USA