Like any 1st-graders, students in Beth Bley’s class at Overholser Elementary School are working on becoming better readers. Unlike most other 1st-graders, Bley’s students have taken an additional step into literacy by becoming published digital authors.

Over a period of several weeks, Bley’s 1st-graders employed creativity and technology to create a movie titled The Town Scissortail Flycatcher and the Country Scissortail Flycatcher. The result, which can be seen on this site as a podcast, includes student writing, narration and artwork.

The project started after Bley read The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse to students and after students themselves had read The Town Bird and the Country Bird. Bley asked students to work together create a similar story with an Oklahoma flavor.

To begin the project, students brainstormed Oklahoma words and then sorted them into town words and country words.

At this point, students turned to technology. 1st-graders hit the Internet to choose the Oklahoma town in which the story would be set.

"We looked at a map on an internet site to find a city in Oklahoma that would be "in the country." Students chose Buffalo, which is in the Panhandle. After they chose Buffalo, we looked at Buffalo’s website. We watched a short video on the website about the town. We also learned that that Buffalo has a rodeo every year, which is why the story includes birds visiting the rodeo," says Bley.

Research didn’t stop at choosing a town. Students also used the Internet to look up facts on Oklahoma plants and animals, learning about scissortail flycatchers (the state bird), redbud trees (the state tree), raccoons (the state furbearer animal), wild turkeys (the state game bird), bullfrogs (the state amphibian) and collared lizards (the state reptile). Students also learned about different Oklahoma locales, and even picked up on the Oklahoma Redhawks baseball team, which became part of the story.

With lists of Oklahoma words at their disposal, students wrote the story and then typed it in Microsoft Word.

Next came illustrations for the book, which again caused students to turn to technology. Student drew pictures and then scanned them into the computer. Photos were downloaded from the Internet so that each illustration would be a collage of student drawing and student-downloaded art.

With the writing and illustrations complete, it was time to record the story. With help from the district’s technology department, students used a computer to record their voices and images reading the story.

Using technology to tell their story made the project that much more fun, Bley says. Ask a student what format their illustrations were saved as, and you’ll quickly hear "J-P-G"! When students first had a chance to see their images on screen reading the story, they were mesmerized.

The project had concrete benefits for students.

"This project included higher order thinking skills because students applied their reading skills, decoding, comprehension, sequencing, sentence structure, verb tense, etc., to create a new story," Bley says.

The benefits went far beyond better reading, says Bley.

"This project was great for students because it included not just reading but also social studies, math and science. It required that students use critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. It required that they use computers and scanners in ways they never had before. Students were motivated to learn because they enjoyed doing the project," Bley says.