The Subject Area 

Updating a Fairy Tale as a Storytelling Project 

English class (year 7) looking at how stereotyping is used as a persuasive device in the media.  

Objectives and Justifications  

• Digital Literacy: Teaching students how to adapt traditional narratives into digital formats helps them develop vital digital literacy skills. They learn how to use various digital tools, software, and platforms for storytelling. 

• Creativity and Critical Thinking: Rewriting a fairy tale for digital media encourages students to think critically and creatively. They must analyze the original story, identify elements to retain or modify, and consider how different media elements (graphics, audio, interactivity) can enhance the narrative. 
• Multi-modal Learning: Creating digital adaptations requires students to work with multiple modes of communication, such as text, images, audio, and video. This fosters multi-modal learning, enhancing comprehension and expression skills; creating a link between story and technology literacy (Banaszewski, 2005). 
• Collaboration: Digital storytelling projects often involve collaboration, as students may work in teams to create multimedia content. This fosters teamwork, communication, and negotiation skills (Yang & Wu, 2012). 
• Cultural Understanding: Fairy tales often have cultural and historical significance. When students rewrite these tales, they will recognise the use of stereotypes, and look at how these alternatively crop up in media from the modern world (Rubegni, 2022), promoting empathy. 
• Personalisation and Differentiation: This class allows for personalisation as students can choose which fairy tale to adapt and how to express it digitally.  

Program Implementation Value. 

Social reading is a highly public endeavour, encompassing digital interactions among two or more individuals. This concept broadens readers’ engagement by enabling them to share thoughts and provide each other with feedback.  

Diverse Learning Needs and Community Use: 

The task’s project-based nature aligns with rhizomatic learning, a philosophy that acknowledges learning as an intricate sense-making process wherein each learner contributes their unique context and specific needs. This approach is particularly advantageous for readers facing learning challenges, as it encourages diverse reading approaches through explicit activity engagement. Learning is not structured solely around content; rather, it is a collaborative social process where students learn alongside and from one another. This could meet the new demands of the job market, where soft skills can be arguably as important as hard and different models of education could be required for this. 

The task’s project-based nature aligns with rhizomatic learning, a philosophy that acknowledges learning as an intricate sense-making process wherein each learner contributes their unique context and specific needs. This approach is particularly advantageous for readers facing learning challenges, as it encourages diverse reading approaches through explicit activity engagement. Learning is not structured solely around content; rather, it is a collaborative social process where students learn alongside and from one another (Dreier, 1999 cited in Penuelet et al, 2017) arguably the skills needed for the global ‘knowledge economy.’ 

Carbo and Cole, (1995) list ‘display’ as one of 7 essential elements for a school library. In terms of teaching to different diverse learning needs and community use, the display of students’ finished work on the library screens would add to the atmosphere of a place of reading for pleasure as a significant part of promoting reading (Dike, 1998). Krashen (2004) suggested that the primary factor most strongly linked to reading success, surpassing socio-economic status and instructional methods, is self-motivated reading. 

 Creation is useful for institutions in terms of student/patron needs. 

A study in Lithuania (Kaminskienė & Khetsuriani, 2019) on personalised learning which used a digital story telling method suggests that students’ active participation increased as it strengthened peer to peer collaboration, although a study by Munajah et al (2022) found that it was the ‘fun’ aspect of the activity that encouraged participation. 

A recent school I was teaching at was experimenting with linking together English work with Modern Languages as part of an endeavour towards a more holistic curriculum in accordance with recent Finnish educational strategies, which push for ‘faculty workshops’ style lessons rather than the teaching of basic skills individually (Poindexter, 2003) that concludes that student enjoyment leads to higher results, it can be assumed from an establishment of intrinsic motivation amongst students (Piaget, 1970, cited in Genovese, 2003). Therefore, I believe that this activity could work in a Modern Languages class as well as an English one.   

Teachers face time constraints due to the necessity of covering their class content, limiting additional chances for enhancing reading skills. The role of the teacher librarian can provide additional opportunities for students to improve their reading. This could make a significant difference to student results, as research through direct observation indicates that both students with and without learning disabilities in secondary social studies classes allocated about 10% of instructional time to engage with written material (Swanson, Wexler, & Vaughn, 2009). Additionally, Capin and Vaughn (2017) cited collaborative strategic reading (Klingner, Vaughn, Dimino, Schumm, & Bryant, 2001). 

Word count: 810 

References 

Banaszewski, T. M. (2005). Digital Storytelling: Supporting Digital Literacy in Grades 4 – 12: A thesis. techszewski.blogs.com. Retrieved September 6, 2023, from https://techszewski.blogs.com/techszewski/files/TBanaszewski_DS_thesis.pdf

Capin, P., & Vaughn, S. (2017). Improving reading and social studies learning for secondary students with reading disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 49(4), 249–261. https://doi.org/10.1177/0040059917691043

Carbo, M and Cole, R. U. (1995). What every principal should know about teaching reading. Instructional Leader, 8(1) 1-3,12.

Dike, V.W. (1998). The role of the school library in reading promotion. In D.F. Elatmroti (Ed). Nigeria school librarianship: yesterday, today and tomorrow, 73-188. Ibadan: Nigerian School Library Association.

Dike, V. W. (2004). The role of the school librarian in implementing the curriculum. Nigerian School Library Journal, 5 (1) 21-28.

DiPerna, J. C., & Elliott, S. N. (2002). Promoting Academic enablers to Improve Student Achievement: An introduction to the Mini-Series. School Psychology Review, 31(3), 293–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2002.12086156

Genovese, J. E. C. (2003). Piaget, Pedagogy, and Evolutionary Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology, 1(1), 147470490300100. https://doi.org/10.1177/147470490300100109

Kaminskienė, L., & Khetsuriani, N. (2019). Personalisation of learning through digital

storytelling. Management: Journal of Contemporary Management Issues, 24(1), 153–166. https://doi.org/10.30924/mjcmi.24.1.10

Krashen, S. D. (2004). The power of reading: insights from the research (2nd Ed.). West Part CT: Libraries unlimited/Heinemann.

Munajah, R., Sumantri, M. S., & Yufiarti, Y. (2022). The use of digital storytelling to improve students’ writing skills. Advances in Mobile Learning Educational Research, 3(1), 579-585. https://doi.org/10.25082/AMLER.2023.01.006

Penuel, W. R., Van Horne, K., DiGiacomo, D. K., & Kirshner, B. (2017). A social practice theory of learning and becoming across contexts and time. Frontline Learning Research, 4(4), 30–38. https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v4i4.205

Poindexter, S. (2003b). The Case for Holistic Learning. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 35(1), 24–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091380309604741

Rubegni, E., Landoni, M., Malinverni, L., & Jaccheri, L. (2022). Raising Awareness of Stereotyping Through Collaborative Digital Storytelling: Design for Change with and for Children. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 157, 102727. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102727

Swanson E. A., Wexler J., Vaughn S. (2009). Text reading and students with learning disabilities. In. Hiebert E. (Ed.), Reading more, reading better (pp. 210–230). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Samdal, O., Dur, W, and Freeman, J. (2004) School In: Currie et al. (eds) Young People’s Health in Context: Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children: WHO Cross-National Study (HSBC), Internation Report from the 2001/02 survey. WHO, Copenhagen.

Yang, Y. C., & Wu, W. (2012). Digital storytelling for enhancing student academic achievement, critical thinking, and  learning motivation: A year-long experimental study. Computers & Education, 59(2), 339–352.                              https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.12.012