Creative Storytelling with Picture Books

Are you looking for ways to empower your students to be more creative? Picture books are a great way to bring your students’ imaginations into your curriculum.

At VoiceThread, we think every student should be heard, but with the time constraints of a class period, not every student has that chance. Why not let them each record their version of a story in one of the picture books that you use with them? Imagine uploading pictures of the book’s pages, then asking your students to use their imagination and record their interpretation of the images that tell the story. Better yet, imagine working with the art teacher to have the students draw their own versions of the images in the book first, upload those pictures and then ask them to record their story. If you really want to tap into their imaginations, imagine drawing an original, collaborative picture book and uploading that to a VoiceThread.

Imagine hearing how well they comprehend the visual scenes and assess their visual literacy, hearing how well they pronounce words and how they use them in context. Imagine hearing how different each student’s interpretation can be. Whether you teach early education or advanced foreign language courses at a higher grade level, your students can take an active role in their own language acquisition and find an outlet for their robust imaginations.

Imagine that.