August is a few days away, and you know what that means! Yes, to the joy of parents everywhere, Back to School season is upon us once more. In celebration, we here at Buncee are bringing you ideas and inspiration on ways you can enhance your lessons in literacy with Buncee.
As you know, not all students enjoy reading or writing. Sometimes it can be hard to engage these students and get them excited and truly involved in lessons. Buncee is an invaluable tool when it comes to getting kids excited about literacy. Here are 10 ideas to help inspire as your classrooms get started on your literacy lessons.
Idea #1: Create a Daily Journal
One idea is to have your students use Buncee as a Daily Journal. Whether it’s a journal for feelings, ideas, or in response to a prompt as part of a daily, “Do Now”, creating a Buncee is a fun and engaging way to create a daily journal. Students can get creative adding stickers and animations to their words. Based on the level of student literacy, you could primarily have your students write, but you could also have them use audio and video tools to express themselves. You could get them to use sharing regularly, then encourage them to build up their writing skills over time.
Idea #2: Creative Writing Prompts
Another idea is to have your students create their own creative writing prompts for their classmates. In this way, your students are allowed a bit more agency in what they’re writing about. Each week, simply instruct a student to create a visual scene on Buncee on a topic of their choice (or through your guidance!) and use what they’ve created as a writing prompt to inspire the students in your class. Your students could then practice their descriptive writing by simply describing the scene made by their peer, or they could practice their narrative writing by creating a story based on the Buncee scene! This is something that may be totally open to helping each of your students foster and inspire their peers, and with all the backgrounds and stickers Buncee has available, it’s easy for your students to really get creative together!
Idea #3: Story Response Journal
Not every kid loves to read, but perhaps a Story Response Journal made with Buncee is just what they need to get involved in what they’re reading! When assigning students to read, have your students create their own story response journal on Buncee, where they can take notes chapter by chapter, or creatively respond to prompts!
Having your students create an interactive journal on Buncee while reading allows them to creatively reflect on the passages they’ve read. Whether it’s by recording their own video or audio to discuss key themes or characters, or by re-creating various scenes with Buncee’s stickers, animations, or backgrounds – using Buncee will empower your students to creatively demonstrate their understanding of their reading in a fun and engaging way!
Idea #4: Bring Characters to Life!
Sometimes it can be hard for students to relate to a character in a book. A great way for students to understand a character is to have them create a fake social media post or profile from that character’s perspective. Using the Buncee canvas, you can have your students retell the chapter or story through a character’s “Instagram account”, or a “Bunceegramm”! Similarly, you could get creative and use Buncee to have your students create a social media profile for a fictional character, or use the Buncee creation canvas to make a Twitter post from a fictional character’s perspective. Social media is the language our students already speak. Having your students use Buncee to design their own “social profiles” of characters they learned about will be a great way to have your students relate and show they understand the persona of a book’s characters.
Idea #5: Visual Vocabularies
Most students don’t enjoy handwriting sentences, but they do like making Buncees! As a fun and interactive vocab lesson, have them construct Buncees that demonstrate their vocabulary words. They can use the stickers and animations to create visual metaphors and mnemonic devices to help them remember their vocab terms. Make sure to include the definition and a sentence!
Idea #6: Create Inspirational Quotes with Buncee
Who doesn’t love reading inspirational or powerful quotes? Creating Buncees of great quotes is an excellent way to have a piece of your reading stick with you.
Having your students create a Buncee of an inspirational quote gives them the critical thinking work of choosing the perfect imagery to accompany someone else’s words. It also elevates the words for your student as they reflect on them. Creating these on Buncee is a great way to help your students learn visual communication skills. Check out this work from Buncee Ambassador Barbie Monty:
Click here to view the Buncee board
Idea #7: Peer Editing
Having your students make Buncees and share them in a class Buncee Board is a great way to get your students to connect, interact and engage with one another in a safe setting! Using this feature, students are not only able to easily create and share their work, but also comment and react on one another’s to give feedback or words of encouragement.
In Dina Bolan’s blog post, Grammar & Editing… A Third Grade Buncee Boards Love Story, she shares how she had her students writing and illustrating run-on sentences in Buncee. When they finished, they edited each other’s sentences in the comments section on a Buncee Board. Using a Buncee Board for your class is a fun, more participatory alternative to the standard daily editing task that often takes place on the Board.
Example Buncee from Dina’s Blog
Idea #8: Build Public Speaking Skills through Poetry Practice
Using Buncee for your poetry unit is a no-brainer. Students enjoy creating engaging visuals to go along with their poems! But when creating these with Buncee, there’s an added benefit. Students can not only write and visualize their text, but they can also practice reciting them with the tool, too! Using Buncee’s recording features, students can record themselves reciting their poems right on the Buncee! In turn, they can practice their delivery, tone, and speaking pace. Public speaking is a skill they’ll need for the rest of their lives, so set your students up for performance success!
Idea #9: Create Fluency Journals
Speaking of ‘speaking’, a great literacy tool that you can put in your students’ portfolios is a document of their fluency development as the year progresses. Have them create a fluency journal using the recording tool in Buncee. Now, instead of just marking down their speed and accuracy, you can demonstrate it. Post a passage in a Buncee, and have them open the audio tool to record themselves reading it. Every marking period, have your students duplicate the latest slide, change the date, and re-record themselves reading the passage. This is a fantastic way for them to really see how much their reading skill is growing through the year!
Idea #10: Modern Letter Writing
So by now, we know Buncee is a great tool for students to write – and to share their writing. But it may also be the perfect tool for students to write-and-share a friendly letter! You can include the important parts of the letter: heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature, which they can draw out themselves or in a template Buncee for them to refer to. Then, as your student is writing, they can choose images and animations to support their writing. If they like, students can even record a friendly little audio clip, or a video of themselves to be included to personalize the letter. From there, you can send the Buncee in an email to whomever it’s intended for! As a tip, Buncee’s emailing feature also allows you to see the delivery status of your message. In that way, you can also check to make sure your friend, colleague, or family member really received it!
These are just some of the ways in which you can use Buncee to enhance your literacy lessons. Did we miss any? If you have an idea for a literacy lesson using Buncee, be sure to tweet it at us @Buncee, and share it on our FB educator’s group page. And so, as you begin to prepare for your students, all of us at Buncee wish you a year filled with laughter, literacy, and learning!
