Storyline Online
http://www.storylineonline.net/
(click to enlarge)
Storyline Online is a website where famous people, such as Betty White, Al Gore, Sean Astin, James Earl Jones, and others, read popular kids books. There are currently 25 different books and readers on the website. No subscription is needed to play the videos. You can search the website by book title, author, or reader. The website has a place where you can give a donation to the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, which is the group that is behind this website, trying to help student literacy grow. (See the link for more information: http://www.storylineonline.net/about/ )
There are so many different ways that this website could be used in a classroom.
Some of the ideas that I came up with are:
- Use this as a brain break for the students. If you have some free time during the day or need the students to sit and calm down for a few minutes, play a video. This will give them a chance to relax and calm down for a few minutes, as well as still be something educational.
- Use this when studying a specific author or genre. If I’m introducing David Shannon books to my students, I could play A Bad Case of Stripes written by David Shannon and read by Sean Astin. The students will enjoy it and it will also give them a chance to hear a book read by someone other than you.
- Use this when introducing your students to reading with inflection. You could read to students one way (i.e., like a robot – no inflection) and then have them listen to a story read on Storyline Online. Read them another book (or the same book) with a different inflection so that the students get exposed to different ways to read the same book.
- Use this to introduce a project. Maybe you are talking about bullying and being different in you class. You could play them the video of David Shannon’s A Bad Case of Stripes and have the students write how they think the little girl felt when the kids in her class teased her. Maybe they could write her a letter telling her why it’s okay to be different.
- Use this as a listening center in your classroom. Our students all learn in a different way. By having this website available for the students to access, along with the book in their hands to follow along with, the students who learn best through hearing will have that extra help.
Standard examples:
SL.K.2 – Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood
SL.1.2 – Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media
SL.2.2 – Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or though other media
Resources:
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012). English Language Arts >> Home >> English Language Arts. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy
SAG Foundation. (2014). Storyline Online. Retrieved from http://www.storylineonline.net/