Last year our talented librarian decided to create a video of the teachers promoting the summer reading program and it was a HUGE success. We had 100% participation from our students. This year the theme is “Gold Medal Readers” and students as well as teachers joined together to create a fun (and funny) video.
Thanks to a couple of very patient parent videographers who worked tirelessly to put the movie together, we had the “kick-off” showing this morning to a rousing reception from students, teachers, and parents alike. Here’s a link to the 2012 Summer Reading Challenge. Enjoy!
I decided on an end-of-the-year project for first grade that has the students drawing their self-portraits in MS Paint. The illustrations will be combined to form a collage that will be printed for each student.
We’ve used MS Paint once with the students but it wasn’t really a detailed drawing so I wasn’t sure how well this would work with the little ones.
After our first session, I am extremely impressed. These children are very focused on creating their portraits. Mirrors were handed out so they could check hair, eye, skin color. (It’s rather humorous to watch students hold the mirror up to their arm in hopes of getting a better view of the skin color!)
We talked about how the picture is a close-up view of each child – a shoulders and head shot. I modeled drawing a large oval for the head then we worked together to do it. Eyes are the hardest so that was our focus for the first session. We’ll have a couple more weeks to complete this. I can’t wait to see the finished portraits!
Here are a couple samples in various stages of completion.
After spending the week learning about the animal kingdom, the kindergarten students visited the lab last Friday to examine some interactive activities. I had several links available:
Variations – from BBC (categorizing pictures by bird, mammal, insect, or plant)
Walk, Swim, or Fly – from Harcourt School (place an animal in its proper environment)
Design an Animal – also from Switcheroo Zoo (create a unique animal, take its photo, then print with information about the new creature)
Build a Fish – from MARE: Marine Activities, Resources, & Education (Choose an ocean habitat, select body parts and colorations that you think will help your fish survive, then click the “Survive-O-Meter” to check its status.)
These are all fun, educational resources but I especially like the Virtual Owl Pellets site. Some of the students had already done their real owl pellet dissection and the others will do that within the next few days, so this was the perfect site for the students to either review or prepare for their hands-on dissection. The funniest part of this website is when a mouse crawls across the screen, sits and looks around halfway across, then continues to saunter to the other side. I had told the students to be on the lookout for a surprise but didn’t tell them what it would be. It was hilarious listening to the squeals as the rodent appeared on the screens. One little girl kept pushing her chair back as if trying to distance herself from the mouse! I highly recommend this site!!
I’ve looked at Glogster Edu for the past couple of years but had only used it during SSTVS. But this year, after hearing that other schools in our area are using it, I decided to buy a subscription for our 3rd and 4th graders. A glog is an interactive poster that allows the creator to add images, text, links, video, and more.
Starting with 4th graders, it quickly became apparent that this was a HUGE hit! The students were more excited about this than I’ve seen them about anything recently! To learn how to make a glog, the assignment was to create something that told about them – their likes, favorite activities, fun links, etc. After showing the basics, I let the students explore and experiment. They picked it up very quickly and enjoyed designing their first glog. At the end of class, I told them to find some website links that they would like to add to their glog. I would show them how the following day.
As the students arrived the following day, I was immediately greeted with: “I worked on my glog last night and added several things.” “Some of my favorite links are now on my glog.” “My dad and I worked on the glog and added a video.”
After seeing how much the 4th graders enjoyed Glogster, I introduced it to 3rd grade. They were just as excited! We spend two class periods doing an “intro” glog; adding links, uploading MS Paint illustrations, and more. Plus, these students are also working on them outside of class.
The next goal is to help the teachers see the uses of Glogster in their curriculum. Since it’s so close to the end of this school year, we’ll probably wait till next year. Already, the students are excited about creating glogs next year so we’ll be off to a great start then.
In celebration of Seuss week, we have done a variety of activities in the computer lab. First graders read Wacky Wednesday, by Dr. Seuss and created a “wacky” self-portrait in MS Paint. For silly sock day, the 2nd graders illustrated their colorful socks or their sock monkey. After reading My Many Colored Days, the 3rd graders wrote their own color poems and added clip art.
The 1st and 2nd grade pictures have been combined and converted to ePub books which can be opened in iBooks (free app from iTunes store) or Adobe Digital Editions software (free download for PC and MacOS). If you have a Nook reader and Adobe Digital Editions, you can transfer the books to the Nook (the formatting isn’t perfect but it still works). The ePub books will not work on a Kindle.
The 3rd grade poems have been saved in PDF files which should be able to be opened on any computer.
You will need to have either iBooks or Adobe Digital Editions on your iPad (or other iOS device)/computer in order to open and read the ePub books. If you have an iPad or iTouch with the iBook app, you should get a message asking if you want to open in iBooks. If you are on a PC with Adobe Digital Editions, the ePub book will open in that software and you can then plug your Nook into the computer’s USB port and drag the book to the Nook. You can also read the book straight from Adobe Digital Editions software.
Thanks to a how-to tip on creating ePub books by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, I figured out how to make an ebook of student work. 2ePub is a free ePub converter that is easy to use. Our first graders had drawn their “Wacky” self-portraits in MS Paint so I inserted those pictures into MS Word, saved it as a PDF, then uploaded it to 2ePub. Extremely easy!! Following Silvia’s instructions, I pulled the book into my iTunes account and added artwork for the cover. To put it on our school iPads I had to email the file to myself then opened it in iBooks.
I didn’t have as much success with the 3rd grade poems! The 1st grade books are just pictures; no text. The 3rd grade students included clip art with their poetry. I tried all kinds of formatting; uploading several different documents. Unfortunately I wasn’t pleased with any of the ePub formats. Page breaks weren’t where I wanted them to be. Occasionally, words were split. I ended up saving the poetry as a PDF and opening them in iBooks that way. You don’t get the “book” feel that you have with an ePub book but it works.
When I showed the students that their work was on the iPad, they were ecstatic!
I’ll email parents with the ePub and PDF files so that they’ll have access to them. It seems that many of the students have either an iPad or an iTouch so they could easily add these to iBooks.
From what I’ve read, it seems that the ePub conversion would be much easier if I had a Mac but, alas, that isn’t in the budget now so I’ll just work with what I’ve got.
ReadWriteThink, which offers excellent interactives for students, now allows students to save their work in some of the activities. This is a fabulous addition to their website since students often aren’t able to complete their work in one session. Below is a tutorial from ReadWriteThink on how it works. So glad they have added this capability!
As a culmination to their fieldwork, the professor of our TCU visitors had her students create some wonderful Prezis about what they had learned in their three weeks of observations at various schools. The “Field Work” Prezi was a collaborative effort by the college students to thank the teachers of the classrooms that they visited. What a wonderful idea! I absolutely loved viewing what they thought of our lessons. It was also interesting to discover what other schools are doing.
Having the TCU students visit is such a treat for us. The children love receiving the extra attention (it certainly helps having extra hands in the lab!). And I like to talk to them to find out about their observations in other schools and learn more about what they practice and discuss in their college classes. It’s a win-win situation all around.
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Miscellaneous | Tagged: Summer Reading | 
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Posted by Karen
