A Thankful Lesson

The Wordle part of this lesson is one that I picked up from someone on Plurk. I apologize for not paying attention to whom it was and giving proper credit.

We began our primary lesson (k-2) by watching a movie about Thanksgiving on brainpopjr. (It is listed as one of their free resources this month.) We also visited Scholastic's First Thanksgiving website. We opened a Microsoft Word document on the Smartboard and listed things that we are thankful for. I told my students that it was okay to repeat what someone else had previously said. After everyone had a chance to say what they were thankful for, I copied the list and pasted it into wordle.



Then while using the SmartBoard, I opened up a Venn diagram template in Inspiration. (If you do not have Inspiration, try one of this online graphic organizers or just use Microsoft Word. As a class, we completed the Venn discussing the differences between the first Thanksgiving and what the students experience today. This is what they came up with.

Descriptive Turkeys

My third graders are participating in a distance collaboration Thanksgiving project called, "Descriptive Turkeys" with another school in Kansas. Students at both schools created turkeys and wrote descriptions about their turkeys.

My third graders used Microsoft PowerPoint to display their work. Students wrote their turkey description on slide 1. Then, they inserted an outline of a turkey and layered it underneath their writing. (abcteach.com provided the template of a turkey outline.) On to slide #2, third graders inserted the photograph of their turkey that we took with our digital camera. We printed the slides and stapled slide one on top of slide #2. This way students can read their turkey description to our partner school and then flip the page to show the matching turkey. It also make a nice display for the hallway.

On Tuesday, November 25 both schools will visit via Polycom to read our turkey descriptions and see if the other students can pick out which turkey belongs to each student based on their descriptive writing.

Leaf Man Visits Burrton

My primary students (K-2) recently participated in a web project created by Marci McGowan called, Leaf Man, Leaf Man What Do You See? Students were able to learn about the fall season while sharing writing, artwork and pictures of their communities on the Internet.

To begin the project, I read the book, Leaf Man to my students. Our Art teacher, Mrs. Cutting, created the frame of our Leaf Man. Then, my children and I decorated Leaf Man. Leaf Man is around 6 ft. tall. We used fake leaves on Leaf Man in hopes that he could be stored for future Autumn resources. After Leaf Man was decorated, he posed for several pictures around our small community.

The Primary (k-1) completed a VoiceThread. I uploaded the pictures and recorded during two class sessions of 20 minutes. This probably could have been done in one session, but we brainstormed things to say on each thread. Here is our end product.



I also wanted to play with a website that was recently introduced to me by Tammy Worcester called Issuu. With Issuu, we were able to publish student drawings from TuxPaint. The students were asked to draw pictures of what they would like to do with Leaf Man if he were alive. I copied the student drawings into Microsoft PowerPoint and then saved the file in ppt format. I used the pdfonline to convert the ppt to a pdf file. Then, I uploaded the pdf file to Issuu. Under "My Library" in Issuu, I found the html code to embed the book into my blog. Lots of steps, but this is the finished product.

Get your own - Open publication

With our Buffaloes (aka Second Graders), we used Mixbook.com to create an online book. I uploaded the pictures and choose a page template to use. Then, the students helped write the text.

| View | Create Your Own Photoproject

If I Built a Car

My primary students, (k-2) just finished a digital storytelling project using Photostory. We began our project by reading the children's book, "If I Built a Car," by Chris Van Dusen to the students. Then students were asked to think about what they would add to a car that they had the opportunity to build. Student created their cars by drawing pictures in TuxPaint . Student drawings were imported into PhotoStory and audio was added.

Hero Project

Fifth graders recently used PhotoStory3 to create a story about their heroes. This was an activity designed to introduce the students to PhotoStory. First, we had students use Microsoft Word to write a paragraph about their hero. Then students used TuxPaint to draw a picture of their hero. We imported the pictures into one PhotoStory and recorded the students reading their paragraph about their hero. Below is the end result.