storybook1

This post is the eighth in a lengthy series where I will be sharing the Web 2.0 tools that I’m using with my Beginning English Language Learners, along with explaining how we’re using and sharing student examples of each one.
Previous posts in this series have been:

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Phrase.It”

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Padlet”

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Szoter”

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Clyp.it”

This Is The Best Web 2.0 Site For ELLs & May Be The Best One For All Students

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Connect Fours”

Web 2.0 Tools For Beginning English Language Learners – “Post It”

Today’s post is about My Storybook, a free and easy tool for creating online, as well as printable, books. You can add text, grab images off the web, draw, etc. After you create your book, you register so you can edit it again in the future. You’re provided a url address to share, but the book itself is not embeddable.

My Storybook has been on The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online since it started.

We used it this week with our Beginner English Language Learners to create an A-Z book about animals. My extraordinary colleague Alma Avalos first created this research sheet for students to use. They then went to The Best Sites For Learning About Animals to find some facts about each animal they chose to write about.

You can see a number of them at our class blog (look at the comments section of the post). Yes, unsurprisingly, a number – though not all — of the short facts they wrote were just copied and pasted, but, as any teacher of ELL Beginners knows, that’s not uncommon. But the next step we’re doing addresses that challenge.

On Friday, students will be presenting their books to the class and using this planning sheet that Alma prepared. As you can see, among other things, they have to choose a few animals they will describe in their own words.

There are many free tools out there for creating these kind of free online books but, for now, I don’t see any ones that are better than My Storybook.