Writing assignment

I explored Piktochart this week. The site has graphics to create numerous types of presentations. Photos, videos, graphs, icons, and text can be incorporated. It took quite a bit of time to create one presentation because I was learning the system. It has a share button so you can email or publish your slides. I chose to use the slides to tell my 5th grade families about our 4th quarter plans to read "Hatchet"while incorporating their Wonders vocabulary words. The way in which I will tie this to writing is by having the students verbally recount the events in the story via photobooth on my computer. Then they will have to go back as a group and summarize the important events that they want to include when writing a script (that will be used to create an imovie recreation of the book). Writing is really difficult for my students for several reasons: they are all verified with a language disorder making reading, comprehension, summarizing, identifying the main idea, rereading text, using text evidence, sequencing, and recalling a challenge. I hope to see similar results as stated in the article, Combining Traditional and New Literacies in a 21st Century Writing Workshop, in that oral rehearsal reduces the demands of writing by freeing up their mental resources. I am predicting that they will be more willing to edit their oral representation than something that is already written and has to be erased and moved.
Included is the link: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/5078217-hatchet

I used Idea Sketch to create a writing diagram/ graphic organizer. I think this app is helpful because you can see the diagram as both a linear sequence and a more familiar graphic organizer. It looks like pictures can be added to personalize the information. Again, it took me a long time (30 minutes) to create a simple visual which is way too long in the scheme of lesson planning for 60+ students each week. I am hopeful that using the app more frequently would result in this process taking less time.