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...)

Google Slides Tutorial

If you are looking to show your students how to create a professional Google Slide presentation, students can "make a copy" of this hands-on tutorial. This tutorial shows examples, and gives students the option to try out different methods.

Literacy, Imagination and the Green Screen - DoInk

If I Lived in a Snow Globe  

First Graders imagined and wrote about living in a snow globe. To enhance the lesson, students were introduced to the green screen and the App- DoInk. The green screen app is easy enough for students to use independently once they see how it works. 

DoInk simply combines layers of images or movies by removing anything green. Let your students' imagination go wild and ask them for their ideas! I can't wait until our next project.