Interactive Digital Storytelling with Refugee Children

This article describes a literacy initiative—an interactive digital storytelling project—designed to invite English language learners (ELLs) from refugee families to build new language competencies. The storytelling project served as the central assignment for a five-week summer-camp-style experience and required the children to draft narratives and then translate them to visual form, using advanced features of PowerPoint. The children who participated were members of a community-based soccer program for refugees that, in addition to teaching sportsmanship, offers academic support to the young players. The multi-phased process of composing and revising narratives, translating them to a visual medium, and ultimately presenting the projects to an audience of English speakers allowed the students to increase their language competency, technology proficiency, interpersonal skills, and academic confidence.