Looking for a way to bring real-world learning into your classroom with projects? Well, there are tons of things you can try out this year, from a small, one-time project, to a year-long project. Some contain extensive use of technology while others have very little. I’ve found some great ones recently I just had to share with you…I’m looking for classrooms willing to try one or more of them out!
Jennifer Wagner organizes on projects all year long with teachers around the world on her Projects with Jen Ning (and yes, this is probably blocked at school…but don’t worry…it’s safe). The third grade at G.W. Carver participated in one of her projects last February called From Me To You 2008. They really enjoyed it, so I’m trying to get other teachers to try out some of her other projects. Here’s a few upcoming projects that really caught my eye:
Runs all year long with a picture and a writing assignment once a month.
Teachers will learn to upload digital pictures to a picture sharing site.
Students take a picture from a window in the classroom/school once a month and write about what they see. The share their pictures from classes around the world to see how seasons vary.
For older grades, Storychasers might be a fun way for your students to improve their writing skills while learning more about their families and community. It is described as “a multi-state (and potentially multi-national) educational collaborative empowering students and teachers to responsibly record and share stories of local, regional and global interest as citizen journalists. There are a variety of types of stories your students can collect, including biographies, careers, and (the one that REALLY caught my eye) ghost stories.
This project is open to 4th Grade Classrooms in Virginia. It meets 4th Grade Virginia Studies SOLs and Writing objectives. This project will run from Oct. 1-April 24, 2009. Registration is open now until Sept. 29!!
Students will collaborate with other 4th graders across Virginia to describe, compare, and contrast regions. They will use a Wiki, Google Maps, and possibily other technology tools.
This project is being coordinated by a group of ITRTS, including myself. I’ll be activly involved in assisting with this project. If you teach 4th grade at one of my schools, I’ll be bugging you about this very soon!
Will be open to all grade levels. Great for habitats, ocean animals, camoflauge, and other topics.
Students will formulate questions, as a class and in collaboration with other classes, to ask Meg Swecker. Meg will be embarking on a scuba diving expidition, and will answer the questions using actual pictures she’s taken underwater.
I’ll be happy to help teachers in my school learn to use Voice Thread and assist you with recording your students questions. As you collaborte with other classes to create questions for Meg, I’ll help facilitate that for you.
More info to come as Meg plans her next trip!
Math Zoo
This is a project is in the piolot phase and will be open to 3rd graders in select Salem City, Roanoke County, and Roanoke City schools. G.W. Carver and East can participate! It will target Math and Science SOLs skills with Mill Mountain Zoo activities.
More info to come! Let me know if you work with 3rd graders at one of my schools and are interested.
Wordle is a really fun, east web tool that turns words into art called “word clouds.” These word clouds emphasize words that are used more often in a piece of text. Wordle makes text clouds from text you enter, from blog RSS feeds, or from delicious tags. There are even options to change font color, type, and the design of the words.
Lots of people, including Pam Elgin, have been tossing around ideas for the use of Wordle in classrooms. Here’s a few you might want to try!
About Me
Have students type their name three times (this will make it bigger than other words). Then have them type words that mean something to them. This would be a great back to school activity.
Describe a Famous Person or a Literary Character
You could do the same activity, but with a famous person.
Adjective Collage
Create a collage of adjectives. In the Wordle Text box, type the noun you want to describe three times (this will make it appear bigger than the other words). Then list all the descriptive words you can think of to describe the noun. Here’s an example:
First Name Welcome
This idea is a great one from Pam. Create a Wordle with the first name of the students in your class to hang on your door. (Example by Kristin Kap)
Type in Spelling or Vocabulary Words
Use for student practice with spelling or as a way to introduce new words in a unit! Students will love making designs and changing font, color, and layout after they have finished typing in their spelling words.
Use as a Hook or a Visual Cue
Create a Wordle to introduce a new unit of student or to help give students a visual of a concept. Here’s one for question words:
Create a Funky Twist on an Acrostic or ABC Book
If you want the words to fall in somewhat ABC order, make sure to check “prefer alphabetical order” under layout.
Quickly Make a Funky Sign
Brainstorming on a Topic (Music example by hbryson)
Book Review
Have student list all the words they can think of to describe a book or a chapter. Remember to have them type the important words more than once so they are bigger.
Vocabulary Words to Practice Reading
(Dolch Word List)
Letter Hunt (for Kindergarten)
You could do different versions with different fonts!
Pre-Reading Strategy
Show students the words from a poem or story and have them predict what it will be about. The Wordle below is from the poem Cannonball by David Crwwley.
Misuse of Common Words
Have students type in a story to see what words they use the most. Make sure they choose “Do Not Remove Common Words” under “Language” to see them all. Here’s an example from one of my summer school student’s blog (most used words include I, like, and):
And another in which the student started almost every sentence with “He.”
I could go on and on and on…I LOVE this tool! What kind of things can you think of?
Word of Caution: Be cautious about the Gallery. I’d recommend you NOT allow your students to browse through it….anyone can make a Wordle, and some are not as nice as others.
Update: Just learned something new, thanks to JBlack’s Awesome use of Wordle! You can keep words together in Wordle if you use a tilde (~) mark between words. So here’s another idea (and yes, I promise to stop now)! Idioms
Create a Wordle with Idioms. To keep words together, put a ~ between each word in the idiom. (Spill~the~beans.) This may be a little tedious for younger kids, but shouldn’t be too hard for older ones!
I’m in the middle of teaching Summer School to some great second graders, and they have been posting to a class blog to practice writing skills. They are really excited about the possibility of recieving comments from people, as well as intrigued with the cluster map on the blog. If you have a free moment, would you mind leaving them some comments? Click here to visit our class blog! Thanks!
Students who earned 100 or more AR points at East Salem Elementary created a Voicethread advertising their favorite Accelerated Reader Books. Here it is!
I was horrible at history when I was in school, especially if it involved memorizing dates and names. I am a “big picture” learner…I stink at details. I learned information better if I could put dates and people into stories. I remember that my mom used to teach me mnemonics and other techniques to remember facts I had to memorize. I think that’s what’s made me enjoy working with Virginia Studies classes on projects this year: I’ve watched the teachers make history memorable and understandable for students with these projects. If I’d had teachers that allowed us to do projects like these, maybe I’d have had a much easier time learning history back then! The first project was a podcast about the 4 regions of Virginia. Mrs. Ingram at East lead a group of students as they wrote 5 different segments–one for each region. It turned out great, and they even had a catchy way to remember the regions.
The next Virginia Studies project involved using Timeliner, a program for creating a visual timeline of certain events. Mrs. Barnett and I worked with two of the 4th grade classes at East to help them create broad timelines that included the most important events in Virginia History. Mrs. Barnett wanted students to see the time span between events that happened, especially the large span of time between the American Revolution and the Civil War. This was a way of placing details into a big picture context. Take a look at some of the ways they displayed this information:
The most recent project was a podcast created under the direction of Mrs. Crotts at GWC. The students met with her and wrote their own scripts for this podcast. I was unable to be at the school to help them record, so a couple of students learned to use an MP3 player to record their classmates all by themselves. All that was left for me to do was add music and put it all together. I’m always amazed at the creative ability of students when given independence…the result was incredible. Take a listen: Ready, Aim, Fire! SOLs! — American Revolution
In the end, the students even wrote thank you notes to both Mrs. Crotts and I for helping them with the podcast, which totally made my day!!!
All three of these projects were wonderful ways to engage student creativity and to help them see the broad picture and stories behind history facts…while using technology!! Thanks, Mrs. Barnett, Mrs. Ingram, and Mrs. Crotts for allowing me to work with you and your students this year. I’ve had a blast! I hope your students did too!
Meg Swecker, an ITRT for Roanoke County, is getting ready to take another scuba diving trip, and she wants to take you with her virtually! Listen to the voice thread below. If your class would like to send her questions for her to answer while she’s there, let me know! I’ll teach you how to use Voicethread!
Have you noticed Third Grade’s bulletin board in the upstairs hallway at G.W. Carver? If so, you might have noticed all the colorful cards, letters, and brochures from schools all around the globe! The students in Mrs. Naves, Ms. Pillis’, Mrs. Hughes, and Mrs. Travitz’s classes have been participating in a global penpal project called, “From Me to You 2008″ organized by Jennifer Wagner on the Technospud Project Website. Teachers from all over the world participated, from California to Maine, Canada to Hawaii, and even Australia! Each Third Grade class sent cards to 23 other classes (and to a Ronald McDonald House) and included a brochure (created by seven very creative third graders) that told the classes all about G.W. Carver and Salem, Virginia. In return, they are receiving cards from other classes, and learning all about places all over the United States and beyond. Students will even have a chance to view the location of all the classes on Google Earth (and learn how to use the ruler in Google Earth to measure distance)! If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at some of the things they have received, take a walk by Third Grade. If you want to learn more about this particular project, you can check out the project homepage here.
Also, if you think you might be interested in doing a global project, I highly recommend looking at some of the other ones on the Technospud Project Website. It looks like an exciting project for K-3 is about to start in March for St. Patrick’s Day (involving Lucky Charms and lots of Math) , one later in the Spring for grades 4-6 based on Prince Caspian (the 2nd book in the Narnia Series), and more! If you choose to do one, please let me know. I’d love to help!!
We are very lucky to have a group of 4th grade bloggers at East Salem lead by Mrs. Baer! Check out their blogs at 4th Grade Bloggers and please leave a comment or two!!
Last week I had a chance to go spend time in NYC. This was only my second time ever visiting, and really the first time I had a chance to check out some of the famous places there. Here’s a thirty second overview of what I saw:
I brought back some pics and short video clips of these places. I’d like to increase our collection of pictures and video clips for kids to use in digital projects without having to worry about copyright. Even though there are sites out there that allow you to download pics for educational uses, there are a number of reasons why doing this is difficult (or not safe) for younger students. Having a folder of pics that match SOLs that students can use freely would help. I’ll add the ones I brought back from NYC. If you have any other digital pics or short digital videos (especially ones that match SOLs) that you don’t mind sharing, please leave a comment here or drop me an email.
I’m slowly (but surely) making my way around to the classes that participated in the Scuba Diving project with Meg Swecker. I’ve already made it to a few classes, and the students have had a chance to record what they learned on a collection of Mrs. Swecker’s pictures in Voice Thread. This VoiceThread will evolve as I finish making it around to the other classes.
Meg and I also had a chance to sit down and talk about the project from our perspective as ITRT’s, and I also learned some of the other neat ways she extended this project with her students in Roanoke County . We recorded much of the conversation as a Field Report for the GenTech Podcast. If you’d like to listen, here’s the link.
Mrs. Prettyman’s Language Arts classes designed some awesome magazine covers on the laptops using Microsoft Publisher. Their covers were based on information they had gathered and used for an animal report! You can see them better “in person” outside her classroom door…so if you have a chance, check them out! What a creative way to get kids writing, Mrs. Prettyman!!
Meg Swecker, an ITRT from Roanoke County, is currently in Cozumel, Mexico. She has been making VoiceThreads for area schools to use in class, and posting them. Five classes from Salem City Schools have had a chance to participate in the project. You can view all the VoiceThreads from the project here. Thanks, Mrs. Swecker! We’ve had so much fun learning about ocean life with you!
Classes from both G.W. Carver and East Salem have put together a few questions in a Voice Thread for our friend, Mrs. Swecker, as she travels to Mexico to scuba dive.
I KNOW we have some scuba divers out there! Even if you are not, here’s a chance to participate in a really fun “underwater” project from area ITRT, Meg Swecker. Meg is an ITRT for Roanoke County, and an avid scuba diver. She is embarking on a trip to Mexico next Thursday (Nov. 15) to go scuba diving, and is taking students with her “virtually” using Voice Thread! (If you haven’t seen Voice Thread yet, it’s the same website used to create the Galapagos Islands Show I posted about earlier.) Right now her Voice Thread is private, but if you let me know you want to participate (or at least take a look), I will add you to the list to receive an invite to the project. Then you and your students can ask questions about the underwater habitat, and she will do her best to answer through digital pictures and her voice. If this sounds like fun to you, let me know! It is very easy to do…and great for any grade level…even Kindergarten ;) !!
It’s been a crazy week in my personal life, so not much “free time” to really surf the net…and not much time to keep up with K-12 Online Conference. But I’m not worried…that’s the great part…most of the conference (all the presentations, at least) will be there waiting for me when things are more manageable on the home front.
That said, I have had the chance to check in on a couple presentations. This one really caught my attention:
Brian Crosby is a 5th grade teacher in Nevada and a blogger on Learning is Messy. He shows actual projects that he has done with his at risk 5th graders…that’s why I was really drawn to this presentation (click here to see). It is really worth the watch!!
For a list of other great presentations available through the K12 Online Conference, click here. Pay no attention to dates….once the link is posted, most of these presentations will be available whenever you have the time to watch/listen. There are a few live events…but these too will be archived so you can watch later.
The first project was a podcast about the 4 regions of Virginia. Mrs. Ingram at East lead a group of students as they wrote 5 different segments–one for each region. It turned out great, and they even had a catchy way to remember the regions.
The most recent project was a podcast created under the direction of Mrs. Crotts at GWC. The students met with her and wrote their own scripts for this podcast. I was unable to be at the school to help them record, so a couple of students learned to use an MP3 player to record their classmates all by themselves. All that was left for me to do was add music and put it all together. I’m always amazed at the creative ability of students when given independence…the result was incredible. Take a listen:
I KNOW we have some scuba divers out there! Even if you are not, here’s a chance to participate in a really fun “underwater” project from area ITRT, Meg Swecker. Meg is an ITRT for Roanoke County, and an avid scuba diver. She is embarking on a trip to Mexico next Thursday (Nov. 15) to go scuba diving, and is taking students with her “virtually” using Voice Thread! (If you haven’t seen Voice Thread yet, it’s the same website used to create the 
