Countries of Origin

Second grade students take a journey to their country of origin using Explain Everything on the iPad. First students demonstrate how to get to their country of origin by flying a plane starting in America. Next, students animate a famous landmark to show where it is located in the country. On the last leg of the journey, students impose a picture of themselves at their landmark and reveal an interesting fact.

Flower Animation

First grade students have been learning how to combine shapes in Google Drawing tools to create illustrations of anything imaginable. In this project, students are using those tools in Google Slides to create digital flip book animation to demonstrate the growth stages of a flower. Once a stage is created, the slide is duplicated creating the starting point for the next stage. When projects are completed, students use the Present mode and advance the slides to see the animation.

Fraction Games with Scratch

Students created a game based on a Scratch tutorial (scratch.mit.edu). Students learned how to use input commands to ask the player questions about fraction addition and subtraction. Correct answers could earn points or advance a character in some other way. Students learned how to use “if” statements to control game advancement based on the answer given.

Writing Revision with Illustrations

Third grades students were writing about small moments. To help them incorporate more details in their writing, students traded their writing with a classmate. The classmate then illustrated a image of their story. Afterwards, students worked with their illustrator to revise both the writing and illustration to incorporate more details.

All About Me

Kindergartener students created All About Me ebooks using Book Creator on the iPad. For the book’s cover, students learned how to take a steady picture using the camera and learned how to add a title with the text tool. On the insides pages, students created illustrations about themselves and their environment using the app’s drawing tools. To get more accurate representations of their unique skin tones, students were shown how to use the app’s custom color tool to set the base color and adjust the lightness/darkness level.

Using Thinglink to Show Parts of a Plant

Students went to their school garden to take pictures of the different plants. They then created interactive labels for the different parts of the plant, and either explained them through video or typing a description.

Scratch Programming Remix

Remixing a Scratch program is a great way to learn about coding. This project allows students to be creative, work on problem solving, apply math skills, and more.

Step 1

• Start with a step-by-step tutorial. Go to scratch.mit.edu and click "Create".
• Have students choose a two step-by-step tutorials from the right sidebar. If a student has never used Scratch before, "Getting Started with Scratch" is a good choice.
• Student should build the project exactly as the tutorial explains. Explain that this is not their masterpiece yet.
• Students explain how the original program works (see worksheet below).

Step 2

• Partner up with a classmate to discuss remix ideas. A remix is a modification to the project that changes it a significant way. Remixes can be simple, but should be more than just changing the colors, background or the sprites (characters). Students can get inspiration by looking through other step-by-step tutorials.
• Students explain the idea for their remix (see worksheet).

Step 3

• Build a prototype. Students can browse other tutorials to learn different coding skills as well as consult each other to build their remix. The goal is to get the program working enough to demonstrate the remix idea, not to solve every challenge (which can take hours or weeks!).
• Students explain at least one challenge and how it was solved (see worksheet).
• Students explain at least one future improvement that could be made (see worksheet)

Resources:

• Example worksheet
• Blank worksheet (computer)
• Blank worksheet (printout)
• How save Scratch projects to Google Drive (coming soon...)