1st grade | Expect the Miraculous

Our 5th grade and 1st grade buddies returned to the media center today for another round of media center collaboration on math standards. Now the 1st graders are working on fractions. The 5th graders worked with their own teacher ahead of time to view the 1st grade fraction standards and familiarize themselves with what was expected of 1st graders. Their teacher encouraged them to stretch the 1st graders thinking within reason.

Today, we started on the carpet in the media center. I used the document camera to display the book Fraction Action by Loreen Leedy. I only showed pieces of the book at a time because I paused and allowed the students to work with their buddies to draw representations of the various fractions from the book on the iPad. They used any of the drawing apps that were installed. Once they drew their representation, students closed iPads and we looked at the representations in the book before moving to another fraction. We looked at 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 in the book.

Next, the groups split. Half of the students used a pizza fraction app on the iPads while the other half went to the computer lab and used several fraction websites that were compiled by the teachers. I stayed with the students on the iPads and had conversations with them about the fraction app. When they reached a point where they were getting bored with the app, we moved to other math apps to practice basic 1st grade math facts.

We plan to continue the fraction lesson on another day by incorporating some fractions that move beyond the 1st grade fractions.

Each student had a chair to put pictures in, a camera, and a cord for downloading

Over the past few weeks, students in 1st grade have been working on a seasons unit around their weather standards in science. This collaborative project involved the 1st grade teachers, the art teacher, and the media center. In class, students learned about weather in the various seasons, dressed paper dolls in appropriate clothing based on the seasons, and wrote sentences about each season. In art, students created background images on construction paper for each season.

In the media center, students came for 2 sessions to create photo story about their creations. They took digital photographs of their paper dolls in each season, imported their photographs onto the computer under their own accounts, and used photostory to record their scripts for each season.

The amount of technology that students used in the media center was a bit overwhelming, but they accomplished so much. To do this project, students had to figure out:

how to turn on a digital camera and take a photograph that included all of the subject in the shot
how to login to a computer with their own username and password, which included understanding how to use the mouse and keyboard
open multiple programs on the computer and go through program wizards to complete the various tasks
save pictures into their picture folder and delete photographs from a camera
import pictures into photostory
arrange pictures in the correct sequence to go along with the script
use a usb microphone to record scripts for each photo in the photostory
save and view their final piece

Once I actually listed out all of those skills (and I’m sure there are some that I missed), it really is amazing what we accomplished in 2 days. I won’t pretend that it was smooth and quiet, because it was very chaotic, messy, and loud. It took multiple adults supporting the students, but the students were eager, excited, and productive. I also won’t pretend that every student got their pictures in the right order or that they recorded the right script on the right picture. I CAN say that every student went through the process and learned something about using technology to create a digital product. They had permission to explore without endless instruction on what to click on and what to push on. Instead, they had some freedom to try things and had a lot of adult support individually.

I think that as a result of this project, we’ll see many more uses of technology in our early grades, and we will continue to collaborate across multiple subject areas.

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