Create Your Own Story:

Create your own story is a website that allows someone to create a story book using technology. The
website has the options to type words straight onto the page, insert animated picture items, create
backgrounds, upload images, and draw onto the page.
UDL Standards:
I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
1.1 Offer ways of customizing the display of information
III. Provide Multiple Means of Engagement
7.1 Optimize individual choice and autonomy
ISTE-T:
2a: Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote
student learning and creativity
1a: Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness
ISTE-S:
6b: create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.
6d: publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for their intended audiences.
2b: engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social
interactions online or when using networked devices.
CCSS:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.6
With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing,
including in collaboration with peers.

Create Your Own Story allows for students to have a choice in how they design their story. They get to
be creative with how they use the website and which tools they want to use on it. Create Your Own
Story is great because it takes a common lesson taught in elementary classrooms and makes it digital.
Students get to work with technology and are able to save the story on their device or share their story
online. This creates a great time for a mini lesson about online safety because you would want to teach
your students where it is safe to share their work.
Since my lesson is having the students create a fiction story this activity is great. It gives them a place to
write their story down and create illustrations using technology. This is how they are able to publish their
story and all the planning they have put into it.
For my lesson, I want to have a large story book in the classroom with every page holding a different task
to work through until they are ready to publish their story. So the first page of the story book would be
step 1 with a QR code that leads them to an activity to assist them in that step and so on, until they finish
all the steps. Once they get to the end, the last page with have the QR code to the Create Your Own
Story website.

Scholastic Story Starter:

Scholastic Story Starter is a website that generates a prompt for students who may not be able to
think of a story to write about. You start by choosing a theme of story, either adventure, fantasy, sci-fi,
or random. Once you choose your theme, you pick your grade: K-6. You then click the spin lever
which reveals a prompt about a character, what they are doing, and why. If you arent interested in
one of the sections, you can individually spin that part to get a slightly different prompt that you are
more interested in writing. Even if you dont want to use one of these generated prompts, it is great
for jogging your imagination and give you ideas about your own story.
UDL:
II. Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression
6.2 Support planning and strategy development
ISTE-T

2a: Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote
student learning and creativity
4b: Address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies providing equitable
access to appropriate digital tools and resources
ISTE-S
4b: select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers design constraints and
calculated risks.
CCSS:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.5
With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by
revising and editing.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.6
With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing,
including in collaboration with peers.
This website supports the planning process of creating a story. It does this by choosing a writing prompt
for the student. This way they can continue with the rest of the writing process without getting stuck on
thinking of something to write about. As a student, that was always the hardest part for me: thinking of a
story to write about. Scholastic Story Starter also promotes a students creativity and takes the normal
process of deciding on a story and makes it a technological process. This also teaches students how to
focus on a topic because they are planning and following a story prompt instead of making it up as they
go.
Scholastic Story Starter supports my lesson by providing either ideas or an actual prompt for a story
that my students can write during their creation of a fiction story. It is not required to use in the lesson but
is there for support for students who may be feeling stuck and unable to start their story because they
cant think of something to write about. This will be one of the first pages in my QR story book in the
classroom. Students will flip to this page, scan the code, and be taken to the website to start planning their
story.

PBSkids Writers Contest:

This website is a mixture of the Scholastic Story Starter, the Create Your Own Story and reading the
work of other kids around the world. It has an area where you can read previous winners of the Writers
Contest, it has an area where you can start creating your own story, and area where you can enter the
contest. I would mostly want to use this website for the students to read previous stories written by kids
just like them. That way they have some examples and see what other kids have created. However, if I
decided to add it, we could have the students enter the Writers Contest.
UDL:
II. Provide Multiple Means of Action and Expression
5.2 Use multiple tools for construction and composition
III. Provide Multiple Means of Engagement
9.1 Promote expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation
ISTE-S:
1a: articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them
and reflect on the learning process itself to improve learning outcomes.
7a: use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, engaging with
them in ways that broaden mutual understanding and learning.
Seeing the finished work of other students promotes motivation in the students because they can expect
what their finished work will look like. After looking at other students works your students may set
personal goals for how they will create their story. This website allows the students to see works from a
diverse group of students from all different ages and different places.
I will place this QR code at both the beginning and end of the QR story book so that student can get some
ideas and make plans for their story that they strive for, but also once they are done and have published
their own story, they may want to take a look at some of the other kids work again.

Avatar Maker:
Avatar Maker is a simple website that allows you to create a character by creating their avatar. First
you choose whether the character is a boy or a girl; from there you get to pick their eyes, nose, mouth,
hair, etc. It is a great way to create a visual of a human character you have pictured in your mind. You
can then download the avatar you created and put it into your story book using the Create Your Own
Story website or the PBSkids Writers Contest website.
UDL:
III. Provide Multiple Means of Engagement
7.1 Optimize individual choice and autonomy
I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
1.1 Offer ways of customizing the display of information
ISTE-T
2a: Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote
student learning and creativity
ISTE-S
6b: create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.
Avatar Maker is just another supplementary website. It allows students to use technology to create their
characters. It allows them to take the idea that they have in their head and create it using technological
tools. It is just another/ different way to design your character. It is also great for helping the students
decide how they will describe their character because they are physically designing it using all the tools
on the website. Therefore, when it comes time to describe the character in words, they can think back to
everything they altered on the avatar when creating it. It promotes creativity by the student being able to
alter so many parts of the avatar to create exactly what they are looking for.

This will be another QR code located somewhere near the front of the QR Story Book. This is because it
is part of the planning process.

Somebody Wanted But So Then:

This is just a link to a picture that has the words Somebody Wanted But So Then on it with the
descriptions of what each word means. this is just supposed to be an outline for writing a story.
Somebody is asking who is the main character?. Wanted is asking what does that character want
or want to do?. But is asking what is the problem?. So is asking how does the character solve that
problem?. Then is asking how does the story end?.
UDL:
III. Provide Multiple Means of Engagement
9.2 Facilitate personal coping skills and strategies
I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
3.1 Activate or supply background knowledge
ISTE-T
1c: Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students conceptual
understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes
CCSS:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3.A
Establish a situation and introduce a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds
naturally.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3.C
Use temporal words and phrases to signal event order.

Students are able to facilitate their own coping skills and strategies when it comes to figuring out what
their story is about and how it happens by following the guidelines set up by Somebody Wanted But So
Then. It also creates background knowledge about the pattern of a story or activated background
knowledge if they have heard/used this outline before. It makes students reflect on their thinking,
planning, and creative process as well. Using this model, students will create a story in a logical sequence
of events.
This activity supports my lesson by giving the students a reminder on how the sequence of a story goes.
That way they can follow this outline and create a story. I will have this toward the beginning of the QR
story book. It will go before the character/avatar QR code but after the Story Starter QR code. That way
students have an idea about what they are going to write and can create an outline of their story following
the Somebody Wanted But So Then outline. Once they have an idea of who their character is they can
use the character/avatar QR code.