I started my year with 5th grade students reading the book, Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea. This wonderful story about seven students in a 5th grade class who go through a difficult period of self-reflection and growth when their teacher is seriously inured by a student in a playground accident, has complex characters. The characters take turns telling the story from their own perspective so there is a lot to keep track of as the story unfolds.
     A large number of my students were lower level, unmotivated readers. I felt this would be a great story for them, but one that would be very difficult for them to follow. Enter Bubble.us! With the complexity of the characters and the way events intertwine themselves,  I saw bubbl as a wonderful way to help students map and follow the story more closely. Connections would be more easily made and the story would mean much more to them. This also would be a great opportunity to introduce story mapping and an engaging digital tool for creating story maps.
     As we read the book students and I worked together to determine the important characteristics of each student in the story. As we did this several students began making incredible connections to the characters and began to identify with them. We mapped out each of the characteristics and the most important events as we went. The connection and understanding of the story was thorough and far more than I had ever imagined it would have been without the mapping resource. In fact, a few months into the school year a student was hurt on the playground in a way very similar to what happened in the book. While the student was not seriously hurt (2 stitches in the head), there were enough similarities and the connections my students had made were so strong it took an entire afternoon with help from both our guidance counselor and principal for the students to regain their composure and go home. Without the storymap on bubbl.us, I do not feel the class would have connected nearly as much.
     After seeing the wonderful connections students made I thought this would be a great tool to engage my students and have them think about their reading more closely. As we launched into literature circles I included the role of storymapper and had them use bubbl.us as their tool instead of paper and pencil.

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Objectives
     As a literature circle role I saw Bubbl.us as a great opportunity for students to be engaged, collaborate, discuss, and connect with each other and their reading. It would easily fall under a number of ISTE standards as well as Common Core standards.
First, the tool allowed for collaboration since students were engaged and eager to create and share with their peers. Other students in the group were eager to collaborate since it was digital, colorful and easy to use. When I put the group’s bubble on the whiteboard so it was easier for the entire group it was easy for them to work as a team to build their story map and share their comprehension. As each student took on the role of storymapper they added to the bubbl map. When they presented their additions to the group, others made suggestions for additions or changes based on their own comprehension.
     Additionally, the tool allowed for those students who were more visual and hand-son learners to quickly see where their reading was taking them. There was a visual model they created with color coded pieces for characters, events and even vocabulary.
As the teacher, once they shared their bubbl with me I could view their progress using it as both a formative assessment and a summative one once they finished their reading and collaboration. I was able to share this with parents and other students within the class, sometimes as a booktalk to encourage others to read the book.



Future changes and improvements

       This project has a lot of merit to it, but I discovered a lot of holes, misunderstandings and difficulties that were unexpected.
When I began the project I planned on showing the students how to use Bubbl.us by creating a story map when reading Because of Mr. Terupt.  I had students suggest what character traits  and events I should add. They made the suggestions and I typed them into the bubbl using my laptop.  My plan was to eventually have students take turns typing in the  features as they began to learn how the program worked.
Students quickly learned the simple features and were able to take over the typing much sooner than I had expected. However, their keyboarding skills, spelling and fascination for changing colors made it difficult for the student to keep up with the typing and they regularly asked me how to spell a word, thus interrupting the flow of the reading. It also slowed down the reading significantly  so it took much longer to finish the story than anticipated.
      I quickly adjusted, brought students to the computer lab and had them explore by creating their own bubbl. I did not have them create and account, rather just had them create a bubbl and explore the different features. This was a big mistake, which quickly came to light. Not 5 minutes into their exploration, several students asked to go get their independent reading books so they could map them. Unfortunately, since they did not have accounts, these could not be saved.
Since students so quickly understood the value and were obviously excited about using this technology to better understand their reading I plowed right ahead and had them begin using the resource to map their literature circle books. At first all went well and students eagerly began using the resource.
     As I met with the individual teams, however, I discovered the mapping was not promoting the deeper understanding that I had anticipated. Students would argue about what to put into the bubbl and, just as importantly, the hardware often did not work (old computers, difficulties with the district network, etc.) causing students to get quite frustrated. Often, so much time was spent problem-solving the hardware that time for adding content was very limited.
     The most important learning for me, however, came later when I reviewed the story maps. It became quite clear that I had assumed their understanding of character traits, important events vs minor ones, character motivation,  and the connection between characters and the story events was far less developed than I thought it would be. I have found that I frequently misjudge student ability and have to consciously reflect and assess my expectations against the actual abilities of my students.
     Now that I am teaching third grade, I still see this as a viable and motivational tool to help students gain a better understanding of their reading. There are several adjustments I need to make, however, to make it as effective as I envision.
     First, I need to slow things down a lot and include a lot of guided practice while using the tool.  Using it with a read-aloud to introduce the idea still would be important, but we would begin in small grops with standard paper story mapping graphic organizers as a way to introduce the idea of story maps, character traits and other comprehension skills. It will be important to take one step at a time, especially for my more struggling readers, and look at just one comprehension feature (say character traits or problem vs. solution) at a time.
     Once they begin to have a better understanding of how mapping can help visualize their reading, I anticipate sitting with small groups of three to four students with a laptop set up where we all can see (Boy, wouldn’t a Smart Table be wonderful for this!). As we read and discuss leveled readers we can decide together what we want to include and why. Obviously, the content of each story map would be different with each story and with each reading leveled group.  As their understanding of character traits and other comprehension skills grow the story maps will become more detailed. By comparing the earlier story maps with later ones a summative assessment of the reading group is made.
     Second, rather than immediately letting students work on their own to create the story maps, I will slowly have students begin to do the typing and creating in their leveled groups. This would begin by giving students a period of time to explore and play with the various features. I see this as important so students can learn how the program works, but also satisfy their curiosity with how the pieces all work together to create an important story. As they learn more about comprehension skills and strategies they will gradually take over the mapping part of our guided reading groups before being allowed to create one for their independent reading.
     Third, I will be asking students to begin by creating paper story maps of their own reading as independent practice in preparation of creating digital story maps later on. The paper maps will give them practice with recognizing the details and traits of comprehension without the intrusion of struggling with keyboarding and the distraction of changing colors and the “fun” part of the story mapping tool. As they become better at identifying the comprehension features they will earn their own story mapping page to use for their independent reading.

 

Update:

Since trying this on my 5th grade students I have used Bubbl.us and, more recently Popplet for story mapping purposes. I have found better success with Popplet since there are fewer gadgets to distract students and the popplet can be used synchronously, with each new popple showing who authored it. There also is an opportunity to add comments so students can have a digital conversation about their reading. I asked my book club group to try using this resource thinking I would have to spend a lot of time helping them understand how to use it. Boy, was I mistaken! I helped them log on and they were off and running. There were a few adjustments needed, mostly about what makes a worthy comment, but it was a great opportunity to get my students talking. Prior to adding the popplet to their discussions, they were having difficulty staying on task and actually having the back and forth comments so important to valuable discussion! 

 

Links to storymapping examples

Clementine: Whole group collaborative map

Frindle: reading group collaborative map (note: comments may not be visible to non-collaborators)

Deltora Quest: Whole Group Collaborative map

Marty McGuire: Whole Group Bubble.us map