Students in Mrs. Mulvaney and Mrs. Downey’s Language Arts Class are at it again! This time they created Cause and Effect Popplets about the book Rosa Parks: Freedom Rider. Many of them blog with different teachers, but you can see their work by clicking on the links below.
This past week, fourth graders at in Mrs. Mulvaney’s, Mrs. Downey’s, and Mrs. Wallace’s reading class have been learning about Rosa Parks while reading the book, Rosa Parks Freedom Rider by Keith Brandt and Joanne Mattern.
To augment what they were learning in the book, they also practiced research skills to learn more about her. They used Mobicip, Popplet, and Videolicious to create videos about the facts they learned.
The project started with Mobicip. Because Safari is not filtered very much in our school system, we have opted to use Mobicip instead. Mobicip looks a lot like Safari (with tabs and a search box) and allows students to save images in the same way. Students practiced finding relevant websites to find facts about Rosa Parks and saved copyright friendly pictures of her to the iPad Camera roll.
Once students had saved pictures and done their research, they used Popplet to create a concept map. This concept map wouldserve as a storyboard for their Videolicious videos.
Finally, students partnered up. One student opened up the popplet they had created on one iPad and the other student opened up Videolicious on the other ipad. The students choose the pictures they wanted for their video. Then, the second student videoed the first student while he or she used their popplet as a guide.
It was great fun and the students learned a lot…and it was very easy. It was nice to be able to research, brainstorm, and create all on the iPad right in the classroom.
This project also made it easy to see where there were gabs in the knowledge of students, which teachers then could address.
Take a look at a few of their final projects!
Rosa Parks Example 1
Rosa Parks Example 2
Second Graders at Glenvar Elementary just completed their annual Animal Research Project. They researched animals using a google custom search and created powerpoints about them! Check out their work below!
https://www.box.com/embed/nyte0pt509h49h8.swf
We were shown this video of an adapted speech by Dan Pink during our last STEM meeting. It’s a great reminder!
There is quite a bit of excitement in the 4th and 5th grade hall at one of my schools. And believe it or not, it’s all about WRITING. Yep! Writing journal entries, writing free writes, writing news reviews, writing assignments. Why? Because students here are using blogs to write!
After a few lessons on safety, blog set up, writing blog posts, and commenting on blogs, these students took their blogs and ran with them. It amazes me every time I walk in the computer lab and hear excited writing discussions, or in the hall or lunch room. I even heard a group of students discussing what they wrote (or were going to write) outside on the playground! And really, they have just scratched the surface. They have been commenting on each other’s blogs, but really staying within their own school. Today I challenged them to branch out and read other class’ blogs around the world. And once again, the excitement was palpable…
I want to try and encourage their efforts by finding folks to comment on their blogs as well. I’ve been following the #comments4kids hashtag on Twitter, and reading through the Comments4Kids site to find other similar classrooms. And now, I’m posting here too in hopes that you might have a moment to leave a comment (and a location) on one of their blog entries. If you have time, here they are:
4th Grade
A big, big thanks in advance, and an offer to return the favor. Leave me a comment (with a url) if you want me to comment on some of your students’ blogs!
Teaching with Technology 