Work+Samples


 * What is a digital story?**

As part of immersing students students in the new topic, and understanding what a digital story is, students viewed a wide range of digital stories. This was for them to develop an understanding that a digital story has a main idea, emotion and to also articulate what they liked and disliked about the stories they were viewing. It was intended they would use this knowledge in the application of their own digital story.



media type="custom" key="7414727" I was really proud of the digital story Joel created. It demonstrated that this task was accessible to a wide range of students. In Joel's mid year report he was Reading (3.75) Writing (3.75) Speaking and Listening (4.00) which placed him slightly 12-6 months behind the expected standards for year 7 at the end of term 2. Joel achieved highly in this project which showed that it catered for a range of ability levels.
 * Joel:**

Joel required extra assistance to help add detail to his digital story. To encourage Joel to write further about his digital story I assisted him and then wrote him questions that he could answer to further develop his writing. The questions included ideas such as 'Tell me about how spending time with your dog makes you feel?' 'Tell me about how you first met your dog?' This was able to help Joel add depth to his digital story where required. When creating his garageband music track, Joel has a natural flair for music and enjoys listening to music, so this part of the task he completed easily. He had experience with garageband prior and became a peer teacher to other students during this session, it was exciting to see him share his knowledge with classmates with confidence. He spoke fluently and clearly when recording his narration, which is a result of the work we did during reading on fluency, which was deliberately taught prior to student's completing their narration.

Because of Joel's reading ability he hasn't yet been exposed to a great range of figurative language and challenging themes and issues in texts. I believe as he begins to read more complex texts he will be able to more comfortably write more freely about feelings and emotions, which was the part of the task he struggled with.


 * Courtney:**

This was a real 'breakout' task for Courtney and is her best piece of work to date. What made this effective for her is that the choice offered in this task allowed her to choose something she was passionate about, which made the whole experience engaging. Courtney chose a great, albeit raw topic to write about. Unlike Joel, she was able to add greater levels of feeling and emotion in her story, which is partly due to subject choice as much as ability. She required little assistance to complete her writing.

The track of music Courtney created while simple was effective for the task required. Courtney had obviously taken in the message behind the teaching about creating a track of music. She had specifically designed her music to be sad, which matched the tone of her digital story.

At the end of semester one, Courtney was at the 'expected levels' for VELS, 4.25 in reading, writing and speaking and listening. As both Courtney and Joel have been successful in completing this task to a high standard (Courtney also received a 25/25 on her rubric) it is clear that the learning sequence designed catered for a range of abilities. Indeed, students operating higher than 4.25 were not restricted and were able to create engaging digital stories.