Introduction to our K-8 content collection

Welcome to Esri's StoryMaps team's collection of proof-of-concept educational stories for K–8 audiences! ArcGIS StoryMaps is a popular tool used in many classrooms, and yet the vast majority of stories created for a K–12 classroom audience have been for the upper grades. Our collection, linked at the bottom, contains examples that you can use as models to create your own content for K–8 learners, or as ready-to-use supplemental learning materials.

You may want to explore ArcGIS StoryMaps as an educational tool because it integrates maps, audio, and other media options within the builder, which is designed to meet accessibility standards used for educational materials. This means that you, as a storyteller and educator, can include interactive materials that will support your learners and their needs, including adding your own narration to provide literacy support and add alternative text for graphics within your story.

Please note that the stories listed in italics below are included in the K–8 collection, and the links that have highlighting are for blog posts, resources, or original source stories, which are not included in this collection. These resource provide instructions or support to help you create your own educational materials.

This ArcGIS  blog post  shares a workflow to show you how to create a story that includes  audio support , like our stories that are geared toward a K–2 audience, Meet the Grizzly Bear and Meet the Beaver. These stories have short sentences, use some common sight words, and cover foundational life science topics. They also feature narration buttons that are placed at the end of paragraphs to encourage students to try reading the content themselves but also allows readers to choose to play the audio if they need support.

See the item details pages,  here  and  here  for correlations to NGSS educational standards for the stories mentioned above.  

Educators know that students in their class may have very different reading skills and use leveled readers that allow for differentiated instruction to support learners. Esri's StoryMaps team created examples of leveled content to show how you can create your own digital version of leveled readers that use the same core content and then edit and present that content at a lower reading level.

The context for this example is that our StoryMaps team member, Ross Donihue, wrote his original  story  for an adult audience and it primarily uses sidecar blocks. His beautiful photos turned out to be ideal for sharing life science concepts and his narrative content related to a few Next Generation Science Standards, or NGSS, core ideas.

We used his original story as a base and then repurposed the story by converting the original sidecar format into a map tour. Then we added and adapted content related to NGSS, and wrote Morning Safari at roughly a sixth-grade reading level. Finally, we duplicated and edited Morning Safari to create Storytelling Safari, which measures in at about a fourth-grade reading level. This example shows that you can take your own content, drop your content into the ArcGIS StoryMaps builder, duplicate it, and adapt it to create your own customized leveled readers.

We also repurposed another team story, How Humans are Threatening Biodiversity, which was originally created for an  adult audience , and adapted the content and reading levels to supplement NGSS content standards.  

It's worth mentioning that you can also duplicate your stories and translate them to provide instruction in multiple languages. The Meet the Grizzly Bear story is now available in Spanish, including the narration, and is included in the content collection.

This  blog post  shares a workflow showing you how to integrate an ArcGIS Survey123 quiz into a story. Colorful Beaches, which is geared toward about a fifth-grade audience, has both audio support, and alternative text, as well as a self-check quiz included. This content peripherally supports NGSS learning standards related to weathering and erosion. The user-controlled narration is placed at the end of the paragraphs to encourage students to try reading the text themselves, yet allows readers to play the audio if they need support. 

Educators––How can we help you? Let us know by taking this quick survey.

We have other education-related projects in the pipeline so follow us on  Twitter  to see our latest content. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this  collection !

It's worth noting that you may have found this Introduction to our K-8 content collection, as part of the collection, or as a stand-alone story. If you're already in the collection, you'll be able to proceed to the next story in the collection by using the numbers buttons in the top banner.

If you read the stand-alone story, please proceed to  story 2  in the collection.