The Wonder of a Wordless Book

Objective: The students will develop and write a creative story from a wordless book. They will record the stories and export them into podcasts to be presented to the class.

Project Timeline: Twelve Days
Prior to day one the teacher will go to the library and check out several wordless books or have students go to the library and choose their own.

Day 1
The teacher will show the students a wordless book she has chosen from the library.
The teacher will begin by modeling a brainstorm session of the book. She will flip through the pages in the book and share some ideas for a storyline aloud. She will model how to fill out a storyboard for her wordless book. The students will be broken into groups. They will brainstorm story ideas and begin filling out storyboards for the wordless books that they choose.

Day 2
The students will be given more time to complete storyboards for their books. The teacher will call the students back together to model how to use the storyboard to type a script for the story. Using Microsoft Word and the projector, she will model how to begin typing up the script for her story. Students will be broken into their groups and taken to the mobile lab to begin typing up scripts in Microsoft Word.

Day 3
The students will continue typing scripts for their stories on the computer. The teacher will answer any questions students may have and monitor progress.

Day 4
The students will continue typing scripts for their stories on the computer. The teacher will answer any questions students may have and monitor progress.

Day 5
The students will continue typing scripts for their stories on the computer. The teacher will answer any questions students may have and monitor progress.

Day 6
The teacher will introduce the students to Audacity, a free audio software program. She will use the projector system to go through the many features of the program with the students such as recording, editing, and adding sound effects. She will model how to speak into the microphone properly to record. The teacher will model how to use the script to record the audio for the wordless book.

Day 7
The students will go into the mobile lab to begin using Audacity. The will record the stories from the scripts into audio files.

Day 8
The students will continue recording stories into Audacity. The teacher will monitor progress and answer questions students may have.

Day 9
The teacher will model how to add sound effects into the audio files. She will use the projector and microphone to add sound effects into her audio story. The students will continue working in groups to add sound effects into their files.

Day 10
The students will continue working on recording audio. They will add sound effects into their stories.

Day 11
The students will wrap up their projects. The teacher will model how to export the audio files into mp3 files. The students will export. The students will begin sharing their completed podcasts. They will hold up their wordless books and turn the pages as their stories are shared from the podcasts.

Day 12
The students will continue sharing their podcasts with the class.