How Creating Stories Can Help Motivate Teens to Read
Getting high school students excited about reading fiction books is not an easy task. With all of their academic and extracurricular commitments, adolescents have little time to think about reading for pleasure. There are myriad benefits to reading, including opening up minds to other perdpectives and improving reading comprehension. Studies have shown that children who read achieve higher academic test scores (Gerrim & Moss, 2018). With this in mind, I am always looking for engaging ways to promote reading to teenagers in my library.
Twine is a digital platform that allows users to create their own adventures. Teenagers, like most people, like to use their imaginations and tell stories. With this app, students can work independently or in groups to create texts that enhance their foundational writing skills while also strengthening their desire to read fiction.
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To get started with Twine, students only need a computer or phone. They sign into the app at
twinery.organd can begin creating. They are presented with a grid where different story blocks appear as they create them. With each new step of the story, another block appears and they can navigate them around the grid. When typing into each block, they have the ability to add photos that will appear once they play their story.
Another benefit to using Twine with students is that it teaches them to use computer science skills in simple form. For example, in order to add an image to the text, users must put the image address in html form. This is easy to do and will introduce many students to this technology for the first time if they've never had experience with it.
Some students like to say they favor language arts over math and science. While this may be a valid assessment, all students will benefit from becoming proficient in technological concepts as well. Learning the basics of computer programming will provide them with another skill to help them make sense of the world around them.
Learning Objectives for Library Lessons
I plan to use Twine during library lessons that introduce the English teachers' independent reading projects. Though students seem to like when I show them a digital slide presentation on books or when they walk through the library and sample some of these titles, they're not always completely sold on reading. Using Twine to have them create their own interactive stories will help them engage with the written word in a way that promotes agency. Students can work at their own pace and level and can scaffold their previous knowledge of writing skills and ideas as they write. If students choose to work in groups, they can help one another as they brainstorm and troubleshoot.
I envision doing a lesson with Twine on the first day of the independent reading projects and then spend the second day introducing the books and doing a speed dating event. When students feel a sense of accomplishment, they tend to be more open to learning. In this way, once they've created their stories, they'll feel more ready to segue into discussing the available fiction books.
Student Assessment
While it's always complicated to assess students' performance on a creative project like writing a story, I would have the students share their interactive stories with another student or group so that they could get peer feedback. I would also read their creations to make sure they correctly implemented the digital tools on the app. The most important aspect of the activity is the sense of self-efficacy gained by the students. Creating a Google Form with a survey about their experience could help me determine how successfully this digital writing exercise motivated them.
References
Jerrim, J., & Moss, G. (2019). The link between fiction and teenagers’ reading skills: International
evidence from the OECD PISA study. British Educational Research Journal, 45(1), 181–200.
https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3498
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Karin: This looks like a great application for many classrooms. I could see this as a great tool for the exact module we are working on - just brainstorming ideas for our presentations. Obviously, it would work very well within classrooms for organizing thoughts, telling a story, and focusing on creative writing.
ReplyDeleteI thought that your lesson would be one that would definitely keep the students engaged. I enjoyed how you challenge them to use their creativity to make the story and your assessment idea to have it peer reviewed to get feedback. Hopefully, most of that feedback would be positive and constructive.
How would the speed dating event work? Is that something like quickly moving from one individual to the next to share stories / creations with each other? I have never used that term, but I might use that in the future if that is what you mean.
Thank you for sharing, I am going to file away Twine for a future lesson.
Hi Stacie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading. The speed dating event is one that my students seem to enjoy. The way I've done it in the past is I start by giving them a brief presentation where I highlight some of the books and have them fill out a quick reader evaluation survey to help them figure out what type of reader they are and what's important to them in a book. Then I have stations set up all over the library. Each one has a physical book and a printed out summary displayed. We used to have them walk around in groups but now we use around 30 books so each student can be at a table alone. This helps them concentrate on looking through the book and seeing if they are interested. I set a timer for a minute and when it goes off they move on to the next table. It's such a fun event and they all find books they're excited (or at least not refusing) to read!