The end of the year means taking a look back and reflecting on what happened throughout the months in a grade level. It’s a time of “I love this grade” and “This is my very favorite year.”
I asked the second graders to brainstorm some of the activities of their year.
The Heritage project and international food tasting
Scientist of the Day
Math
Co-curricular subjects: Computer, Spanish, Chinese, Library, Art, and Music
And of course . . . who can omit recess or P.E.??
The next step was to illustrate their favorite (or in some cases, favorites) activity from their second grade year. For us, Microsoft’s Paint program is a good drawing tool. We use it quite a bit and the students are very comfortable with it.
The next step was to write a script in Microsoft Word that would be used for recording in the Book Creator app. A few students balked at that, saying they could remember what to say without writing it down. However, I told them that even pros write down what they’re going to say and we would take lessons from them! (Besides, it was a good way to practice word processing skills!)
Since we were making a class book, I pulled in all the pictures to the Book Creator app (uploaded the drawings to my Picasa web album account and saved them to Photos) on my iPad. Then the students recorded their narration. I really like the ability to bring in short video clips to Book Creator so we added a brief whole-class shot.
The result is an ePub book that can be read in the iBooks app on any iOS device. And now, with the latest version of Book Creator, the ebook can also be read on any computer by using the Google Chrome browser and the Readium app. (For instructions, see the post, Book Creator and the Readium Chrome Web App.)
If you are on an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc) and you have iBooks installed, tap on a link below.
Last year I decided to have the first graders draw a self-portrait for an end-of-year paper “quilt” collage. The students and teachers enjoyed it so we did it again this year and I was absolutely floored by the quality of work from our children!
We use Microsoft’s Paint program at our school and the students are introduced to it as young as kindergarten. What always amazes me is how well the children do drawing with a mouse. Try it sometime! It’s not easy!
This year we upgraded our operating system to Windows 7 so the Paint program is different than what we’ve been used to – more drawing choices and easier in some ways but a bit quirky in others. For example, there are more brush choices (a good thing). But one odd quirk we’ve all noticed is that sometimes the fill bucket doesn’t fill properly. It may only fill part of the area, leaving the edges in a different color. In such cases, the student has to carefully take a paintbrush and fill in the desired color. Rather frustrating!
To begin the self-portraits, I handed out small mirrors so students could check hair and eye color. I also distributed a square template so that all drawings would be the same size. We started with the background color. That seems to be one way to prevent the fill bucket problems. The next step was to draw a large oval for their face and we walked around checking each one – “Too small, try a bigger one.” “A bit large. You might not have room for hair.” We were drawing a “head and shoulders” shot. Then the students found a skin color to fill in their oval.
Eyes were next and we really spent a lot of time talking about how those look. I told the students we would draw one eye then copy it so the second one would look exactly like the first. The pupil, the iris, the white part (sclera) were drawn using the oval tool and then filled in with the fill bucket. Some students announced that their eye was finished and they were ready to copy it but I asked them to look closely in the mirror and tell what else they saw. “Eyelashes!” several announced. We decided that the pencil would work well to draw upper and lower eyelashes. By the end of the first class, almost everyone had at least one eye and they were beginning to draw the other facial features.
In our next session, we talked about eyebrows, noses, ears, neck, shoulders, hair. It took about 1 1/2 more 40 minute class sessions for all students to finish. The students did an amazing job – they were focused and worked hard to make their self-portrait look as close to their facial features as they could. I love how they filled the square with their drawing. Enjoy their wonderful work!
Mrs. Hutchinson’s Class Quilt
Mrs. Kee’s Class Quilt
Mrs. Orehek’s Class Quilt
I used the “Combine” feature of Photoscape (a free photo editing program) to make the quilt collages.
Hints for next year:
Draw the neck and face in the same session and fill both with the skin color. If you do this in 2 sessions, the fill bucket doesn’t work correctly (it doesn’t fill the space completely).
Make one eye then copy and paste it in the same session. Again, this is important for the fill bucket to work properly, especially if you have to add eye color to the second eye.
I have mixed feelings about teaching keyboarding to first graders – their little hands are so tiny that it’s very difficult to keep fingers on the homerow keys. With that said, it is important for children to begin to get familiar with where the keys are located.
These keyboards are helpful in that student see which keys correspond to each finger. When a child is searching for a letter, it’s also easy to say, “The N is a blue key on the bottom row.”
I haven’t done much with keyboarding with the first graders this year because we lost the software we used to use. In our upgrade to Windows 7, we discovered that Typing Pal, Jr. does not work! However, Dance Mat Typing from the BBC is a fun alternative!
This is one of the best keyboarding sites I’ve come across. Students love it because it is engaging and fun! In fact, even if a student finishes the program, they absolutely do not mind going through it again!
On Wednesday, I introduced Dance Mat Typing to our first graders. They worked hard for the 10 minutes that I’d allotted for practice and all agreed it was something they would like to practice over the summer.
I got a kick out of listening to one of the students – he was practicing the homerow keys by typing words. I could hear him spelling out each word as he typed: d-a-s-h, h-a-s, s-a-s-h. I don’t think he had any idea he was saying anything outloud!
Students won’t have perfect form right now (and it’s certainly not expected!) but this wasa good introduction to keyboarding!
The Book Creator for iPad app is one of the very best apps I’ve seen for inspiring creativity. We’ve used it to create all kinds of ePub books that have been shared with parents. RedJumper, the app designer, has done an incredible job of updating and adding new features.
So I was absolutely thrilled when version 2.5 came out and I discovered that the books created in Book Creator could now be read in the Google Chrome Browser!
All it takes is downloading the Readium app from the Chrome App store and ePub books can then be read on a Mac or PC. This is huge! Many of our families have iOS devices, but not all – now ALL families have the capability of reading their child’s work.
Here are the directions to read your ePub book on a Mac or PC: (**These are specific directions for our parents to download books that have been saved in my Dropbox account.**)
What is a pourquoi story? Ask Mrs. Garcia’s second graders and they’ll be able to tell you that it is a type of story that tells why something is the way it is. In fact, pourquoi means why in French. Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories is a classic work of this genre. Do you remember . . .?
“How the Camel got His Hump” or
“How the Leopard got His Spots”
Many cultures have pourquoi tales that have been passed down through the ages. In a collaborative effort with technology and art, Mrs. Garcia’s students explored some of these stories using the “making smaller circles” principle.
Josh Waitzkin, an eight-time National Chess Champion in his youth, attributes his success to learning techniques he developed to bring his mind and body to peak performance. In The Art of Learning, Waitzkin reveals his self-study to define techniques to maximize student achievement. One of those techniques he calls “making smaller circles.”
In Mrs. Garcia’s homeroom class, students practiced how to “zoom in” on pourquoi stories’ problems, blocks, and outcomes.
In Mrs. Black’s art class, students focused on an aspect of a subject in the story to create artwork showcasing that “zoomed in” part.
Armadillo Tattletale
Using technology, students created and recorded a class ePub book with the Book Creator app.
Screenshot of page in Book Creator app
Using PowerPoint and an image from Pics4Learning I created a zoomed-in version of a zebra using the theme of “making smaller circles.” This became the book cover for the ebook.
Mrs. Garcia, Mrs. Black, and I hope you enjoy the students’ view of pourquoi stories.
Our kindergartners have been studying the solar system for the past couple of weeks. They have visited the planetarium, watched Brainpop, Jr.’s Moby and Annie talk about the solar system, visited webpages about space. As a culminating activity, each child was in charge of learning about one planet and making a model of it. These were brought in on Friday, so when the students came to the lab, I told them they would be able to draw either the planet that they studied or anything else in the solar system.
This was the students’ first introduction to the Microsoft Paint program; although several were excited to share that they had this program at home. I gave a quick preview of the most important tools and off they went. Below is a collection of their drawings (and I think they did a really good job, especially for the first time!).
The first grade teachers had been talking about adjectives and decided Skitch would be a nice way to reinforce describing words.
When the students arrived in the lab, I paired them up and had everyone sit in a big circle. The teacher and I talked about adjectives and then introduced the project. Each group of two shared an iPad (which worked well for the most part!). The children were to take a picture of each other, import it into Skitch, and then write words that described their partner.
Step 1:Pose for photos. Partner 1 took a photo of partner 2 and handed the iPad back to partner 2 so he/she could write their name.
Step 2:Open the Skitch app and import the photo. My original plan was to have the children get used to using the camera on the iPad and then go to choose a photo. However, that extra step added too much time so after the first class we just used the “Take a Photo” option within the Skitch app.
Step 3:Describe a partner. The iPad returned to Partner 1 who wrote describing words. (Does all the changing sound confusing?? The students really did figure it out!). The hardest part was dealing with the arrows! The idea was to draw an arrow from a word and point it toward the student in the picture. Unfortunately, we ended up with LOTS of little arrows everywhere. The children forgot to switch to another tool and would touch the screen. Everywhere they touched, a new arrow appeared!
Step 4:Email the document to me. When finished the students emailed their Skitch document to me so that I could print them in color.
Step 5:Change roles and begin again.
Considering we only had about 40 minutes to do everything, the students did remarkably well for the first time using this app. We’re still working on mastering adjectives vs. nouns but that just takes practice!
Mrs. Cooper’s second grade class spent the month of February researching presidents. They talked about qualities needed to be an effective president. This led to a discussion on characteristics of leaders. Mrs. Cooper invited our headmaster, Dr. Krahn, to visit her class to share his ideas about leadership.
The students jotted ideas in their journals but decided they wanted to share what their thoughts with others. They came to the computer lab earlier this week and started blogging their thoughts.
They would love to have others looks at their writing so please visit Mrs. Cooper’s blog and feel free to leave comments!
To celebrate Dr. Seuss week, we read Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss to our first graders (who just happen to come on Wednesday to the lab!). I have to say, there were some VERY wacky-looking students (and teachers) in the lab that day so drawing a wacky picture was not a problem at all!
The students used Microsoft’s Paint program for their illustration. The teachers joined in and discovered that it’s not so easy drawing something on the computer! Most didn’t finish during lab time so we carried over to the following week.
Once the students had completed their drawings, we opened MaxWrite (from Max’s Toolbox by FableVision Learning). MaxWrite is the child-friendly word processing program that runs off Microsoft Word.
The students inserted their pictures and then described the “wackiness” they had illustrated. We’ll be printing these out to make a class book.
I took their drawings and created an animoto video. Enjoy!
Once again, to celebrate Pi Day this Thursday, March 14, McGraw-Hill is offering several apps free of charge for iOS devices and at a reduced price in the Google Play store.
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Computer Lab Activities, Digital Storytelling | Tagged: 2nd grade, Book Creator, ePub books | 
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Posted by Karen
