Using Storybird to Enhance Storytelling

A few years ago, I came across the website, Storybird.com, where students can create their own books.  The great thing about it is that it has so many illustrations that can inspire a child’s story.  I’m going to walk you through Storybird so you can get an idea of what it’s all about.

As a teacher, you can create an account for yourself.  I have all of my students log in under the username and password I have set up to avoid having to create one for each student.  To keep all of the stories straight, they just type their first name and last initial on the title page and designate themselves as the author.

 When I log in, I see this screen.  It shows how many published and unpublished stories are in my account.

This is an example of a few pages from one of the books a student of mine made.

When I submitted candy as my search term, a bunch of pictures with candy in them came up.  I chose the picture of the girl on a donut raft holding a lollipop….because that donut looks pretty delicious.

Now, it brought me to a bunch of pictures by that illustrator that are similar to the one I chose.  In the top right corner of my screen, I clicked, “Use this Art” and then click, “For a Story” so that I can start to write.

Now, I’m at the part where I can start to create  story.  All of those pictures from that art collection are now on the side of my screen.  Below, the blank page, you can see where I can add pages and remove pages.  It’s super easy.  You just have to drag a picture onto the blank page.  They give you a bunch of different layout formats.  I’ll show you some of them below.