Tag Archives: classroom

I was trying to gather up some of the links from projects that my students did this past school year, now that they have left for summer vacation and another school as they make the big leap up to a combined middle and high school.

But looking at the list of these projects, and thinking of the ones not even listed here (such as prompts and exploration over at The Electronic Pencil), I realize how much they did while with me in writing class. I just completed the web pages for the Claymation and Digital Picture Book projects because the pieces seemed scattered all over the place and I wanted to bring them under one webby roof.

Here are some of our shared adventures this year:

• Claymation/Stopmotion Projects 2008
• Crazy Dictionary Project
• Digital Math Picture Books 2008
• PeaceBuilders Comics Site
• Puppet Shows 2007
• Student Poems 2008
• Student Tall Tales 2008
• Virtual Art Museum 2008

I think my push into using more technology to showcase their work was worth it, although it inevitably led to troubleshooting, work-arounds, and other headache-inducing periods of time. Still, as a collection, I think this list shows my students as creators of content and creative thinkers.

One of my regrets is that Youth Radio did not take off this year and there are a variety of reasons for this. But we saw, and see, the possibilities for podcasting across the world for young people and we need to figure out if it is worth re-launching the project for next year. Any ideas?

Peace (in sharing),
Kevin

My students are fully immersed right now in creating Digital Math Picture Books, using PowerPoint as the platform for creation and MS Paint as the (cumbersome) illustration tool. Despite the many limitations of both of those software programs, they are hard at work and fully engaged in creating picture book stories that weave mathematical elements into the mix.

There are stories explaining the geometry of shapes; using order of operations to solve mysteries; and explaining the difference between pie and Pi. Their audience is going to be students at our school in lower grades, but they are having a blast with the creation.

This past week, we were fortunate to have a father of one of my students come in (I will refer to him as Comic Dad) and he worked with our four classes on the process he goes through to create a comic called Rocketboy, which has been featured in Nick Magazine (as a 3D comic, no less). He and his partner have also worked on other projects over the years, but he focused in on Rocketboy — who wishes more than anything that he can fly, but cannot.

What I liked about what Comic Dad said:

• his collaboration is a true collaboration with his partner — ideas are bounced in and bounced at all the time;
• the work is being revised constantly right up until publication and he had the storyboards to show the changes;
• creating a character with flaws leads to story lines (each Rocket Boy story revolves around his failed attempts to fly);
• humor — both outright and subtle — has a special place in comics, where the visual medium meets the writing;
• perseverance is a key word for any writer wanting to be published.

Meanwhile, my students were finishing up their own storyboards and so I grabbed a few of the pages and made this little movie of their initial brainstorming work that must take place before they even get to boot up the computer.

I’ll share out more as the process progresses, including some of the characters they are creating (some are just so amazing and interesting, I think).Peace (in picture books),
Kevin

Every now and then, I like to share out some of the projects my students are engaged with in the classroom. The past two weeks, we have been working on Figurative Language as we gear up for poetry, and then songwriting. I wrote a post about the use of hyperbole for tall tales over at TeachEng.Us last week. We also looked at comic books for Onomatopoeia, did some games around Idioms, reviewed similes and metaphors, and listened to color poems for Imagery.

For Alliteration, we worked on tongue twisters, using Dr. Seuss as an entry point into the crazy ways that words can make your tongue jump, twist and turn. Some of the students participated in a podcast of their tongue twisters, after I first shared out the twisters that I wrote for myself and the other three teachers on my team. I used a little Olympus voice recorder to move around the room.

Take a listen to our Tongue Twister Podcast

Then, for Personification, we talked about how it can be used for an entire story (Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, for example) or in a sentence. We created some sentences, got on the computers, and they had to illustrate one of the four Personification sentences that we composed. Here are some of the illustrations:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Finally, our school is in the middle of Quidditch season, and one art activity that we do with them is the creation of team t-shirts. I went into the art room with my camera to capture some of the work they were doing for our team: The Ice Legend.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Here is the shirt the kids are working on for me. I let them do what they want and hope they won’t embarrass me too much.

Peace (in student work),
Kevin

Glazed eyes often accompany my unit on Parts of Speech and I don’t think it is my teaching style (he says, confidentally). It’s that the concept of how words act within the structure of a sentence is so incredibly abstract for my sixth graders that they can’t connect it with their own base of knowledge. I’m not sure how learning about nouns, verbs, etc, helps them progress as writers. Yet, it is part of what I need to teach, so we do activities (such as using a Nerf Brain Ball as a devise for showing prepositions – I threw the brain ball across the room and hit Mr. Hodgson in the head, etc).

Our final project is to write a short piece about themselves and then use color-coding to identify a set number of Parts of Speech within their own writing. I hope this brings some ownership to them, but I am still not so sure. (They also can do a bonus of writing and performing their own Grammar Rock song, which are still underway).

Here is a student sample of a Parts of Speech project:

Nouns are blue
Verbs are red
Adjectives are yellow
Adverbs are green
Conjunctions are orange
Prepositions are pink
Pronouns are purple
Interjections are brown

Feel free to use my project handout, if it interests you.

Peace (in dissecting our language down to its bare bones),
Kevin

I teach writing to 11 year olds but that doesn’t stop me from injecting some political current events into our activities. I remind them that they need to pay attention to the world, as it is their world that is being developed right now. The political season in the US provides us teachers with an opportunity to talk about leadership and the ways of our government and I sure hope that teachers are using this opportunity.

Yesterday, our state held its primary election (Hillary Clinton won). Last week, I had a long discussion with all of my students about the differences of a primary and a caucus, and what those results mean.

I decided that I wanted to give my students some voice and so we held a modified “Mock Election” using Survey Monkey to allow my 80 students to cast a vote for major candidates in both parties and to answer some questions about the state of our country and the priorities facing our nation.

First of all, the voting:

They are really struck by the youthfulness of Barack Obama and that appeals to them. It also is a surprise to them that we have never had a woman run for president. Or maybe it is shock. The girls, in particular, seem to connect with the concept of Clinton and it makes me wonder, regardless of her politics and chances of winning, if she isn’t making a substantial impact on young women right now just by being in the race and having a powerful voice.

McCain has appeal because of his time in the military and they know that he was a POW and they believe that gives him some fortitude in leadership.

I then asked them to consider which issues are most important to them:

I thought for sure that the environment was going to win but the war continues to be a focus. We live near an Air Force Base and there are a number of families with relatives in Iraq, so the war and its impact is very close to home for many of my students.

Then, I wondered if they thought they should have the right to vote.

I guess the graph says it all.

Peace (in politics),
Kevin

 

Yesterday, I shared out some of the results of a survey that I gave to my sixth graders. Today, I am sharing out some of the comments they added for two questions:

First, if they said that schools should teach them how to use technology to connect with other students, then I asked them to write why that is important to them.

Here are some of their comments:

• Yes and only if the teachers teach you to be very careful on how and what your saying to interact with friends online, and if someone you don’t recognize thats trying to communicate with you,you should just tell a parent or teacher you trust. Also never, ever give out personal information!
• Yes, because it good to know how to communicate with each and other. It is also become very common and it would be helpful if you were taught about it.
• I would like it because,when you grow up to get a job.The owner would see ask you if you know alot about technology.That is why teachers should teach kids how to type and read!
• I think that because we should now properly how to communicate with others so that if there was ever an emergency and you did not have a phone you would have to be able to get in touch with somebody fast and I don’t really now how to do that and I’m sure that most other people do not now how to get in touch in other people. Like my grandparents. They have a phone but if they did not and one of them had a heart attack the other would not now what to do.
• I think yes because teachers can teach us how to start IMing and emailing and teach us not to trust or talk to people you do not know.
• sometimes kids don’t have computers and need to learn how to write to others. they also might not have the best handwriting. That’s why I think schools should teach how to write on computers.
• Yes, it would give kids more introduction to what happens on the internet.
• If the teacher teached us how to use technology for communicating we could what to do and it would help with social skills. I also think we should learn other technology also because technology can be very important. Me myself would like to have a class that could learn about things like video making and editing because it is important to me.

Second, I asked them envision a classroom of the future (Always an interesting question to pose to students).

Here are some of their thoughts:

• There should belarge computers with a 300 gb hardrive and memor
• I think they’ll have a tiny computer that teaches them everything. Everything will be used in technology.
• Robots as techers and mini laptops
• I think that they will have laptops on every desk, and high tech stuff to use because later 30 years from now if people now are good with technology they should be wicked good with using it 30 years from now.
• Mind reading pencils
• I think that they will be using computers that wrote down what they wanted to write. It would a be voice activated computer. I know that they have them now but, they have not reached the schools quite yet. Also they would have these robots that do the homework for the kids.
• No keyboards, faster use, no lag, more information, and easier to learn
• High powered scooters — 2 min school with thinking helmets — and better food
• Super-high tech computers, with almost immediate signal. I also think that Apple(Macintosh computers) will be more advanced and more popular.

Interesting, eh?

Peace (says the robotic teacher),
Kevin

Usually, once a year, I try to give an online survey (using Survey Monkey) to my sixth graders to get a sense of how they are using technology and how they perceive technology and education. The first seven questions that I posed to my students were itemized and the last two questions were short answers.

Tomorrow, I will share some of the short answer responses, but here are the results from the first seven questions:

I find it interesting that so many consider themselves “advanced” in using technology tools; that video and music are at the heart of how they are using technology (it must be at home); that a good majority of them enjoy writing (yeah!); that so many think the use of the computer as a tool allows them to be a better writer (although I did not define what I meant by “better” so it may be a bit unclear if I am talking about content or proofreading); and that so many want to learn more about interacting with others via technology.

Peace (in unofficial data),

Kevin