Polona Miklavc, OŠ Vransko, Tabor
Teachers of Slovenian language always face the question of how to motivate their students to read literary texts, to think and write about what they have read and how to inspire them to create their own stories. As home reading (checking the comprehension of the texts read at home in the class) is often a problem because students are reluctant to read, I decided to deal with the problem (in the 6th and 7th class) using a Story Starter Lego Kit and to hand the responsibility for learning over into their own hands. Students got the title of the book to be read in the agreed time for home reading as usual. Then we discussed the text which was read in the classroom, but in a slightly different way than usual. Pupils had to summarize the story using Lego cubes and minor pieces, which were put on the base plate. Each of the plates represented a part of the story. Thus, each student presented a part of the story and in the end when they put the plates together there was a whole story presented. When the story was put together and well presented, they also created a comic with the help of a Story Visualizer computer programme. This programme also allows the creation of books or newspaper articles. Students recorded visuals to create stories using their smartphones and exported the recorded items to a computer programme. With the help of different templates in the programme they combined the images and entered texts. That was an original way to present and to share the story. The main goal I wanted to achieve was to motivate students to read literary texts. Moreover, I wanted to make students – through experiential learning – remember the course of the story easily, and analyse the entire literary text with the help of tools and IT which are close to them. I also decided to conclude the comprehension by recreating the story through the Story Visualizer computer programme so that pupils would not just think about what they had read but also to awake their imagination and creativity. The added value of the Story Starter Lego Kit is that it allows pupils and students to develop their narrative skills, learn about ideas and concepts of different stories, it helps develop their visualization and language skills, helps them memorize the stories faster and more efficiently, improve reading comprehension, encourage participation in the group and allows the integration of technology into the learning process.
