What it is: Kids can be the star in these online storybooks with Learn Direct. Students can type in their name and be a character in the book. On each page their are options for customizing the story. Students can adjust pictures and certain sentences in throughout the story. After students have customized the book it can be read online, saved as a pdf or printed out. These fun interactive stories will make reading time fun for your beginning readers (kindergarten through 2nd grade). Learn Direct also features a fun little virtual world where students can play word and reading games. Students have to solve word puzzles to navigate through the world.
How to integrate Create Your Own Storybook with Learn Direct into the classroom: These online stories are a lot of fun. The ability to customize them will make them a winner in the classroom. Use the Storybook with an interactive whiteboard and have students take turns customizing the story. Set up the Storybook on classroom computers as a center activity during literacy or reading time. Students can save or print out the books to share with others or take home. The word games in the virtual world would be fun to play and solve as a whole class with the interactive whiteboard or play in pairs on classroom computers as a center.
Tips: There are some great tips and resources for parents about reading with their kids on the Learn Direct site. Check out the Scared of Words? page and then pass it on to your parents.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Create Your Own Storybook with Learn Direct in your classroom.
I immediately checked out this website. What a great tool to use in teaching adjectives and elaboration to young writers. My students would love to create their own personnel story book to read. The words in the stories are a little advanced for my first graders right now, however they would enjoy reading it at home with their families. The website is very user friendly and visually appealing to kids. Thank you for sharing!
Allison
This software caught my eye because I recently had a colleague mention it in a class discussion. He had discussed how much of an improvement this technology made with his Spanish classes. After looking into the Learn Direct website, I think that it would have a great effect on creative writing in my language arts classes. I would also be interested to see how I could integrate it into other classes.