E-books can be used for various classroom activities. In this example, English teacher Zoe from Hong Kong Baptist Convention Primary School made an interactive e-book with different endings of the Gingerbread Man story and used it as an example for her students to practice writing creative story endings.
In her video recording below, Zoe talked about how her students gradually approached writing up their own creative endings for the Gingerbread Man story.
A quick recap of Zoe’s procedures mentioned in her video:
Firstly, students were guided to read the interactive Gingerbread Man e-book in class, and decide where and how the gingerbread man’s ended up by clicking on different options for the characters in the story.
Students were then taught about the criteria of an interesting story ending.
They worked in groups and took turn to read through a different new version of ending.
Students voted for their favorite ending and explained why in a short survey.
The language features of Ending Version D were highlighted by the teacher and then tested by a Kahoot! game.
Students were told to write up the first draft of the story ending at home.
Comments from the teacher and peer students were given to all first drafts and students finished their final drafts based on the peer and teacher’s feedback.
Course materials mentioned in the video above are as follows:
1. The interactive Gingerbread Man e-Book
A preview of the Gingerbread Man e-book:
*The above e-book is in the format of PowerPoint (.pptx). To play the story, please firstly open the .pptx file , and save it as a .ppsx file (PowerPoint Show). After the ppsx PowerPoint Show file is opened, the story will be played automatically. You can also use the buttons (if any) on the screen to navigate the story. Here is a short video about how to save the file as a .ppsx.
2. Worksheets
Here are the worksheets the teacher used for consolidating her students’ understanding about the story and also getting to know the features of an ending:
3. The four versions of new endings
Students were also given four versions of new endings of the story and decided which one was their favorite in an online survey later on:
For the complete Gingerbread Man unit plan, which includes this e-book and many other e-resources, click here.