Digital Cartoons: Parts of a 4th Grade Story

Jesse Rasmussen

University of Portland

In this project, 4^th grade students learned how to take pictures with a digital camera and how to use Microsoft PowerPoint to create a digital cartoon. They learned about the parts of a story and then used the technology to create cartoons of their small groups. Each group added dialogue bubbles and thought bubbles to complete their project, and presented the finished cartoon to the class. This technology provided an avenue to teach the parts of a story. The students have gone on to use the five parts of a story in their State Writing Samples. They also created speeches for their State Speaking Samples about the process they went through in creating their cartoons.

Technology: Digital Camera

Computers with Microsoft PowerPoint

Procedure:

1. Students use story boards to draw out the five story scenes. They draw one picture for each part of the story: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion.

2. Teacher sets up the digital camera on a tripod or table. Students pose their scenes, following the plans they created on their story boards.

3. Teacher downloads the pictures onto the computer and inserts them onto slides in Microsoft PowerPoint. Technologically savvy students may be able to insert the pictures themselves.

4. Student groups insert thinking or talking bubbles for all the characters in each picture and write what they want to be saying or thinking.

Assessment: Create a simple rubric of what the students should be able to do by the end of the project. Some examples are:

TLW: know how to take a picture with the digital camera

TLW: be able to frame a picture on the intended subject

TLW: know how to zoom in and out with the digital camera

TLW: know how to create a new slide in Microsoft PowerPoint

TLW: know how to insert and delete talking bubbles and thinking bubbles in Microsoft PowerPoint

TLW: know how to save a project to a specified location on the computer