Today, I began the initial work with my sixth graders on creating digital picture books that will integrate knowledge of Cellular Mitosis into a fictional adventure story. They will be using MS Powerpoint as their platform, with animation, audio, hyperlinks and video embedded into the books.

Today, we looked over Magic School Bus books and talked about the use of layered literacy (I didn’t use that term, of course, but that was what I was getting at), and then we watched a video of one of the Magic School Bus shows, and we talked a bit about the difference in media. I want them to think critically as viewers, so that we can then make the shift to critical composers/writers.

Tomorrow, I hand out a packet with instructions and they will begin some initial brainstorming on story ideas and maybe even push into some storyboarding. I will even show a few samples of digital books from past years. In the past, my students had more freedom for curriculum topics, but I am working more closely with my science teacher partner this year to get deeper into understanding mitosis, so we’ll see how things fare as we move along.

Here are some math books, turned into videos, from a few years ago:

Peace (in pictures),
Kevin