The Fourth Grade Team at HMJ Elementary School wrote a letter to Principal Labbo proposing a digital storytelling project to teach students about the American Revolution. They explain that digital storytelling allows students to incorporate various media like images, music, and narration to tell stories. The proposed project would have students work in groups with fifth grade experts to create digital stories based on a read-aloud and primary documents. The goal is for students to strengthen skills while learning in an engaging way and to motivate them to connect with history. If approved, the teachers plan to screen the digital stories for parents and administrators.

1. HMJ Elementary School
6420 Literacy Road
Athens, GA 30605
Dear Principal Labbo,
We are writing this letter in the hopes that you will allow our grade level to embark on a digital
learning adventure to help our students understand the American Revolution and historical
fiction. As you know, the curriculum has become increasingly demanding, especially in the area
of Social Studies. We feel that we have written a lesson plan that will encourage a deep
understanding of this important time in our American history through the use of digital
storytelling.
Before we get into the specifics of our project, we would like to take a moment to explain what
we mean by digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is a way in which students take primary
source documents and tell or share stories of any genre. Students can use digital story telling to
share their family history, tell an original story, or, in our case, create a story with a historical
perspective. Digital stories can include primary sources like music, audio pieces, pictures, maps,
letters, stories, and even interviews from individuals who have experienced the event first-hand.
Students will be able to include any type of media in this project, which is something they are
extremely interested in. They are excited to be able to incorporate music, images, narrative, and
other forms of media into these projects.
We have educated ourselves on the successful nature of digital storytelling in the classroom and
feel that it will be a highly effective method for our Fourth Grade students to use. Digital
storytelling allows students to motivate and support each other, which, ultimately, helps them to
understand and process the information they are obtaining about the subject more easily.
Additionally, pictures and other forms of media have been identified as visual and audio
concepts that can help students understand what they are learning more deeply. These stories
make thinking visual, which is helpful for a number of students and we hope to be able to
implement this activity into our classrooms. With that being said, let’s talk more about the
activity itself.
Our lesson plan incorporates the use of our school’s technology teacher and fifth grade project
experts. We will be using the computer cart and the computer room to allow students to create
their digital stories. Our lesson plan begins with a read-aloud story about the American
Revolution. We will read a book by Laura Crawford called The American Revolution from A to
Z. This lesson ends with student groups creating their own digital stories that can include
pictures, original writing and narration. The fifth grade experts will act as teacher helpers for

2. each group in their process to create their own digital stories. Through this activity, students will
be participating in peer learning, as well as strengthening their confidence and teamwork skills
through working together.
This learning adventure will incorporate reading, writing and thinking skills while focusing on
the area of the American Revolution. Teachers will scaffold each step of the process. The
project will give students time to work together and talk about creating their own characters
based on the pictures that teachers will share on the document camera to spark purposeful talk
about living in this time period. The objective of the project is for each group to write a piece of
historical fiction after observing and discussing a primary document. We believe that, by
incorporating this technology and the use of older peer helpers, students will be motivated to
make personal connections to this time period. Moreover, this will ensure that students will be
able to create a digital story they will be proud of and will want to share.
If successful, we would like to share our digital stories on a special movie day for our grade level
and the fifth grade experts. We would also like to invite parents and the administration to view
our finished projects. This “public” viewing will motivate the students to do their best work. In
addition, it will show the parents and other individuals what the students are learning within their
respective classes.
Our grade level believes that this project will be an outstanding way to motivate our students to
connect with our country’s past while also allowing for differentiation among students. We hope
that you will thoughtfully consider our proposal and we look forward to speaking with you soon.
If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact us! We have a number of text
and web resources that we would love to share with you or anyone else who might be interested
in incorporating Digital Storytelling in their classroom. It is an awesome, exciting, engaging
activity - our classes cannot wait to get started!
Sincerely,
The Fourth Grade Team
The Fourth Grade Team