4-Word Story/Snapchat 2.0

Here is a new twist on 4-Word Story which I implemented last week. It was the second day back from winter break, so I wanted to do some review with my Latin 2 students but not make it feel like it was review. I felt that doing 4-Word story would be a non-threatening way to get students back into Latin, but I wanted to change it up a bit to preserve the novelty. For this, instead of having students draw pictures to go with their sentences, I had them create Booksnaps/Snapchats, since we had already been using this tool in class. 

Students turned in their Snapchats and sentences online to our class Dropbox so that I could edit their sentences grammatically and then cut/paste them onto Google Slides so that I could show them in class. 

Student directions

1. Create/illustrate an ORIGINAL 4-frame story which uses at least FOUR of the following words:

• in silva
• vis est
• dat
• occidit
• cibus
• avis
• saxum

     2. Write a sentence or two IN LATIN which narrates your illustration for each frame.

NOTE - you may only use KNOWN words, i.e., you may only use words which we

have learned in class these past two semesters or from last year. Any words which we
have not done this past semester or from last year are OFF LIMITS.

     3. Create a BookSnap/Snapchat for each of your sentences. You must have a minimum 

         of four pictures. DO NOT WRITE YOUR SENTENCES ON THE SNAPCHAT!

     4. This is YOUR OWN original work!

Student examples:

Observations

1. Because students were already familiar with both 4-Word Story and creating Booksnaps/Snapchat, melding the two activities did not seem to confuse them. 
2. The new piece of the puzzle was that students had to submit their sentences separately (instead of writing them on their Booksnaps/Snapchats), because I wanted to edit them and to cut/paste them to create a slideshow. I implemented our class dropbox for this.
3. As you can see, some students wrote at a novice level (basic sentences), while others were able to write at an intermediate level (compound sentences, using clauses). That is perfectly fine. All that matters to me is that students are making an attempt at  communicating in the language.
4. Those students who did not have access to a phone or to Snapchat had to do a paper copy of the activity.
5. Going over the stories in class is a great way to get in more repetitions of the language in a compelling way. 
6. Because the stories are student-created/teacher-edited, they are written at a very comprehensible level for students.