Using iPads to Develop a Sense of Story

This article narrates the authors' experience with 5-year-old Aiden, one of the senior kindergarten children in the all-day, every-other-day classroom in which the authors studied the students' writing throughout the 2015-2016 school year, from September to June. Aiden was an interesting child because he always had a "plan" for whatever he wrote. Most times, he would draw a diagram of what he was going to write about and then begin his story. During the months of April, May, and June, the authors functioned as the classroom "Writing Centre." The Centre offered a place for the students who wanted to write a story to come and discuss what tools they wanted to use when they were writing/composing. The choices that the students had were pencil, pen, coloured markers, crayons, paint, and either paper or an iPad computer. As the year progressed, Aiden was often the catalyst for classroom events that happened around the Writing Centre. His stories always had a beginning, middle, and end while many of his classmates could only master one or two parts of the writing process. The authors conclude that Aiden is a prime example of how a 5-year-old child develops a sense of story. Their research project, which studied the relative usefulness of using the iPad "Sense of Story" application to develop a sense of story with senior kindergarten children, revealed some notable findings: (1) When given a choice of traditional writing/drawing utensils or iPads, most of the young students chose pencil-and-paper over technology; (2) All of the students used illustrations in their stories; (3) The teacher makes the difference!; and (4) The children make another difference!