For “Task 6: Emoji Story“, we were encouraged to describe a story using only emojis. This was probably my favourite task in the course, as I think that it is engaging for all levels but I also think that are so many different valuable ways that a teacher could use it with a class to teach writing.
Jasmeet H. made a similar connection as me in feeling that this would be a valuable task for her English students. I ended up trying this activity with my six-year old daughter who I am homeschooling right now. As anticipated, it was incredibly engaging. My daughter wrote more with emojis than she typically would with words, and unlike me, she really did not overthink what the emojis stood for before adding them to her story. I personally found that I spent quite a bit for time trying to determine the best emojis to convey verbs that were just not on the emoji keyboard. Therefore, the approach that I took for my story was very similar to Jasmeet H., as Jasmeet H. described that the best emojis were chosen to convey the main ideas.
In addition, Jasmeet H. and I both chose stories that included murder and death. Jasmeet H. used a knife emoji to depict the murders which made complete sense for Romeo and Juliet. It is funny, but I did not even consider using a knife as the murders in the story that I was telling did not happen with a knife, but maybe if you are using emojis the depictions do not need to be so literal but more about conveying the ideas? Next time I write an emoji story, I will need to channel my inner six-year old a bit more.
Link to Jasmeet H.’s Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/jhothietec540/category/task-6/