Perhaps you have a wonderful children's story you want to write starring a child with multiple disabilities, perhaps you have a social story you want yo try in a new format or perhaps you want to write a story to go with a theme unit you are teaching. Maybe you want your students to write a story. Here are three sites designed for creating children's books.
Story Jumper
Story Jumper has an option for a classroom account on the sign-up page which gives you a free account and some other special features, so be sure to use it. In the classroom account you can add students and give them home access to books you create. The pages of the books can be turned via switch, given the arrow is over the turn page button and the switch is set to click. Right now there are quite a few fables you can explore for free in Story Jumper in addition to making your own book. When creating a book there is "story from scratch" or any of nine templates to use. For example the calendar template might be fun to customize to your class or a particular student, perhaps using pictures from the school year, and then use to reinforce calendar concepts. Creating and editing the books using Story Jumper is pretty simple.
Story Something
Story Something is another children's story site, but is designed for families. Also it doesn't allow authoring, but rather personalizing. Sometimes, however, some of the best resources for our family-like substantially separate classrooms are homeschool resources. Story Something is in beta testing so there is a chance it will charge in the future. Story Something has many stories in different topics from holidays to science and it allows you to personalize the stories by changing the characters names. You can print or e-mail the personalized stories.
Story Bird
I have written about story bird before. Since then they have freshened the interface and added even more great art. It is a great tool that allows you to find art and then compose text to create a storybook. You can work solo or collaborate. The books do not read aloud, but can have the pages turned with a switch set over the turn page arrow and when reading a book the computer goes to full screen mode. While still in beta mode, Story Bird commented last time I wrote that they will always be free.
Tikatok
Tikatok asks students (or their teachers) to write on themes using Story Sparks (aka story starters). Then this writing and the uploaded drawings (no pre-draw art or images here) are turned into a book to access on the site or to have printed as a "book store quality book". There is a special section for teachers with recommendations on how to use the site and special pricing. Note that you are required to sign off on getting parental permission.
Bookemon
Bookemon allows you to create books using a template or a document like a Power Point or PDF. There a many templates from stories to year books. You can use uploaded images, photos and art work or the provided art. Once your book is created you can keep it online or have it printed as an actual book for a fee. There are two options for teachers; educator discounts and ed centers (private groups for your students).
Thank you for posting some fun sites for writing. I find it sometimes challenging to get students excited about their writing and the stories they can share. I'm definitely going to try out a few of the sites with my students to spark their creativity and excitement.
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