Thursday, December 17, 2009

Presidential Reports



The January project for my 5th grade students is to research a United States President and create a magazine cover using the website bighugelabs.com/flickr. Also, the final project submitted must have a wordle of their researched President’s speech. The following pictures are examples of their work.

Here are some areas that are researched:

Use www.wikipedia.com to find the following information:
President Name__________________
____President of the United States
Political Party__________________
Occupation__________________

Use www.brainyquotes.com to find a quote from the president.

Tip for magazine cover is to have a designated spot for the student’s name.


Use http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches to find the Inaugural Speech



Do you Wordle?

The website wordle.net is great for many creative lessons. Seasonal Wordlists, book reports, creative iron on transfers, seeking repetitive words in a paragraph are just a few of the ideas that can be used with Wordle. Wordle takes words and combines them to make a cloud or art out of the words. The words that are repeated are larger where as the words that are not used as much in the paragraph are smaller.

Tips: Put ~ between words that you want to keep together. This could help make a creative display characters for a book report.
Also, have the student type their name in at least 5 times so it becomes part of the wordle. This is for easier identification on the owner after it has been printed.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

EXCEL Graphs in December


Excel Graphs are excellent to use during the month of December! Surveying students favorite Christmas Books, Movies, Reindeers are a cinch!

A survey about train snacks can be done after reading Polar Express by Chris van Allsburg or your favorite reindeer after reading The Night Before Christmas.

I like to discuss as a whole group for 1st-2nd grade students where as my 3rd-4th grade students type in their work and edit the graph.

Monday, December 7, 2009

The Safest Way To Share YouTube videos

Lesson planning is like laundry. It always needs to be done. Also, self-assessment on past lessons needs to be updated and reflected upon. I came across this website http://www.safeshare.tv/ while preparing for 5th Grades digital story telling and podcasting lessons which are lessons that will be started in the late winter early spring.

Did you want to share a youtube video in class but didn’t like the advertisement before or after the video?

I have an example below that you can click and see what this website does!

Example: [Video] Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA - ASL Song

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Polar Express

This lesson can be modified for any lower school class. This PowerPoint comes with bells and whistles! As a whole class we watch and listen to The Polar Express by Chris van Allsburg http://www.storylineonline.net/ which is read by Lou Diamond Phillips and is about 9 minutes long. Each students responds to the book by typing in their “wish” for the world on a PowerPoint Slide and inserting their digital picture in their train car window. Students also are shown/modeled how to change the color of their car window. This lesson can be differentiated by having students change the font, size, and color.

Here is a link for the Powerpoint.
http://www.cobbk12.org/sites/literacy/fetc/ppt/Polar_short.ppt