Tag Archives: photo story

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Paul Revere Transliteracy: A Third Grade Collaborative Project

Back in September, third grade took a transliteracy approach to exploring rocks and minerals.  After participating in this experience, Mrs. Shealey, 3rd grade teacher, had some ideas for how the transliteracy approach could inspire the Paul Revere standards that 3rd grade was about to work on.  She scoured the internet for resources and developed her own Sqworl pathfinder to share with students.  She also developed a menu of projects that students could choose from.  After introducing the idea to her team, we all met together to continue brainstorming and think about how technology could be incorporated with the menu ideas.

Ideas included:

  • Make a map of Paul Revere’s ride with important events, photos, and videos using Google Earth & Google maps
  • Create a newscast of Paul Revere’s ride with eyewitness accounts.  Use the iPad to film the newscast and iMovie to edit.
  • Use Museumbox to create various cubes about Paul Revere:  his ride, his character traits, events leading to American Revolution, etc.
  • Create a piece of art related to Paul Revere.  Use Photo Story, iPad, or Glogster to display the art and talk about it.
  • Write a poem or a song about Paul Revere.  Use the iPad to film a performance of the song/poem.

Ideas continue to be added to this menu.  We decided to narrow the technology focus to just a few tools:  Glogster, Museumbox, Photo Story, Animoto, iPad & iMovie, and Google Earth/Maps.  Many of these tools were new to students so we wanted students to have a chance to explore each tool before committing to a project or tech tool.  We decided to have a technology fair where each class could come and tour through the tech tools to gain some familiarity with each tool to inform their decisions.  I saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring in student expertise, so Ms.  Hicks, a spectrum teacher, helped identify students who could teach other students about each of the tools.  Google Maps and Museumbox were new to all students, so I led the station on Museumbox and Todd Hollett, technology integration specialist, led the station on Google Maps.  

The students and adults setup their stations, and each class came through the library for about 30-40 minutes to see mini-presentations and play around with each tech tool.  Students freely moved from table to table and at times needed encouragement to move on.  Many students wanted to stay at one table to become an expert in a tool, but that was not the point of the tech fair.  Expertise will develop later.  We just needed them to be familiar enough with each tool to know what it was capable of doing.  Even though all students did not make it to all stations, each class had a good representation of students who visited enough of the stations to be able to share back in class.

Our next step is for students to decide on their project and tech tool.  The teachers will then group these students into groups based on their tech tool.  Then, during a block of time each day, students using the same tech tool will meet in the same room so that they can support one another as needed.  I’ve seen amazing things happen when a large group of students using the same tool are in the same room.  They discover things that I would have never had time to figure out or teach to everyone and they willingly share their learning with other students.  I think we will be pleasantly surprised by the knowledge that students gain about these tools during this process.

The teachers and I will also support students with the technology, but we also want our focus to be on supporting students in locating quality information for their projects.  We will rely on the pathfinder as well as books from our library for this endeavor.  I can’t wait to see what students come up with!

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Digital Alphabet Books

 

 

Two Kindergarten classes have been collaborating with me in the library to support their study of the alphabet.  First students came to the library for a lesson on alphabet books.  We explored numerous alphabet books, upper/lowercase letters, and the sounds letters make.  I used LMNO Peas by Keith Baker to look specifically at upper/lowercase letters.  Next, we used Gone Wild: An Endangered Animal Alphabet by David McLimans to continue looking at upper and lowercase letters, but in an animal format.  We put each illustration under the document camera, guessed what letter the animal was making, looked at the standard upper/lowercase letter, and talked about how the animal’s name started with the letter.  We ended with Alphabet Explosion: Search and Count from Alien to Zebra by John Nickle.  We put a few illustrations under the document camera and had students identify as many things as they could find that started with the letter of the alphabet represented on the page.  At the close, students checked out an alphabet book from our wide selection.

In class, students were each assigned a letter of the alphabet.  They decorated an uppercase & lowercase letter, added an illustration that represented that letter, and wrote the word for the illustration.  They also began practicing saying the letter, the sound it makes, and the word for their illustration.  In small groups, they brought their finished illustrations to the library to use the scanner to scan their images.  While students waited to scan, they continued practicing their scripts.  After 2 days of scanning, I imported all of their pictures into Photo Story.  Then, in small groups they came back to record their scripts for their assigned letter(s).  Once again, while students waited, they practiced.  After all students recorded their voices, I finalized the Photo Story and uploaded it to Youtube.  The students will come back to the library the next time they check out books for a premiere of their video, but you can get a sneak peek of one class below.

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Book Spine Poetry

Today Mrs. Yawn’s 2nd grade class made book spine poems.  This is a project that I started with classes a couple of years ago, but over time it has developed.  I’ve learned more about crafting book spine poems that make more sense than randomly pulling books off the shelf.  One tip that I give students is to look for book titles that don’t have character name in them.  I also suggest looking for one book title that speaks to you in some way and building upon that.  For example, the book I know Here refers to a place, so you might look for other books that refer to place to make a strong poem.  Here are the results of today.

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Photo Story Seasons: A 1st Grade Collaborative Project

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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Joyce Sidman Poetry Study

An amazing opportunity came through my email a few weeks ago when Jennifer Graff, co-chair of the Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast at NCTE, was looking for student poetry inspired by Joyce Sidman, the keynote speaker at the breakfast.  I immediately agreed to work with students on a poet study because Joyce Sidman is one of the poets that most inspires me as a writer.

I sent out an email to teachers with possibilities for this study.  Here were some options:

  • Read Red Sings From the Treetops: A Year in Colors and write poems about colors in the various seasons
  • Read Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors and write poems and informational text about things in nature that have survived the test of time
  • Read Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night and write poems and informational text about plants and animals of the night
  • Read multiple books by Joyce Sidman and write poetry that was inspired by the elements of her poetry

Each one of these options could involve multiple forms of technology or be done with paper and pencil.  So far, one teacher has completed a Joyce Sidman collaboration with me and another has signed up to begin in late April.

I collaborated with Ms. Olin, my former paraprofessional and now student teacher, to read multiple poems from Joyce Sidman’s books and talk about “noticings” from each of the poems.  We looked at things like similes, repetition, rhythm, shape, form, word choice, and more.  Students decided to write poems about nature since much of Sidman’s work is nature and science based.  They took photographs of flowers, trees, and other nature around our school and also searched on Creative Commons for images.  Students wrote poems at the media center tables and conferenced with me, Ms. Olin, Ms. Biehl, and their teacher, Mrs. Selleck.   Finally, students used Photo Story to import their pictures, add text and music, and record their voices reading their poems.

These poems and others created in the coming weeks will be played at the Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast at NCTE in Chicago.  I’m so excited that our students’ work will have this authentic audience to appreciate their creative endeavors.  You can get a sneak peek at some of the poems by clicking these links.

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