Reflection on Final Project

Seems appropriate that we are in the middle of a typhoon and my final project is on weather.

This project is an integrated unit with first grade's weather unit. Last year I read a book that was about clouds and what to do in severe weather. I briefly tied in some library skills by discussing the differences between fiction and nonfiction books. We looked at the call number and I pointed out where nonfiction books are in the library. After the book students played a weather matching game that they loved. It was made by a weather channel and the kids would flip the cards (about 25) and match the photos of in pairs. When a pair was matched it disappeared.

I wanted to improve on this lesson and use the vocabulary words and photos from the Grade 1 FOSS science kit to create my own game. This would be integrated in the curriculum much better and have a stronger impact on student learning. I did a search online for a PowerPoint or Smartboard card game but none of them did quite what I envisioned. I have started the PowerPoint and I can create cards and match them but have yet to figure out how to make them fly off the board once they are matched with the correct pair. If anyone knows of a different program (flash for dummies) or a way to do this, please let me know.

Nancy came through for me again and sent me a memory game. I have finished the game in Smart Notebook and the flash is already done for me so I don't have to learn it. Nancy also showed me the website songs for teaching that has a weather song.

Head, Body, Legs

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp9pZbxvrco[/youtube]This lesson is for kindergarteners and ties in with their social studies unit titled, All About Me, where they gain knowledge of individual development and study basic external body parts. I read the silly book, Head, Body, Legs: A story from Liberia by Won-ldy Paye & Margaret H. Lippert, which is about a disembodied head that can't get cherries or mangoes from the trees unless it cooperates with the rest of the body parts. It finds arms, legs, and body and they work together to get the food they want to eat. I have done this lesson in the past using cutout butcher block paper and magnets and decided to try the Epson Brightlink. The kids loved it. All of the students were able to manipulate the pen pretty smoothly. One boy had a temper tantrum because he didn't want to wait for his turn. When head cooperates in the story he says "This is perfect." One class picked up on that and when they finished their picture they said, "This is perfect." Attached is a video showing the students manipulating the pen.

Standards Accomplished in This Unit

Library Standard 3: The student who is information literate uses information accurately and creatively.

3.3 Communicates and synthesizes ideas in logical and creative or novel ways.

3.3.2 Presents information that visually conveys the main idea and supporting details about a topic.

ISTE.NETS Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

Social Studies: Individual Development and Identity

ISoc4B3: c. describe the unique features of one's nuclear and extended families

Integrated Unit: All About Me – Students learn how they are special and unique.

Reader's Theater

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wui_Q44YVVs[/youtube]Grade 3 performed a reader's theater of the book, Chester's Masterpiece, by Melanie Watt. The story involves the author leaving sticky notes to the character in the book which ties in with reading strategies being taught in the classroom. I used the document reader with Avermedia software on my computer to project the book onto the wall using the Epson Brightlink projector. Students read one page of the book using the microphone from a portable speaker. Props of the author, Chester, and Rat were used as they spoke their parts. Only one of the five classes stayed focused until the end. The words were a little too hard and the lesson was a little too long. Next year I will do this lesson in the springtime when students are better readers.

I had problems with the document reader freezing. The document reader is old and the software is new so I think it is just a compatibility issue but I'm not sure. Anyone had this problem?  I attached a video. In the beginning the girl is struggling with holding the script, prop, and microphone. I told her to put the pages on the chair but she forgot. Other students would mix up the pages or drop them. I put the pages in a three-ring binder and set it on the chair and that seemed to correct the problem. I also moved the videotographer by the speaker and the sound is better in the following person on the video. I had the students' who have problems focusing run the video and flip the pages of the book.

Kill the Widget

Kill the Wabbit! Elmer Fudd shouts at Bugs Bunny, his archenemy in Looney Tunes cartoons.

After my widget war, I too, have a battlecry:

Kill the Widget!

Let me explain.

I've been working with a grade 5 teacher who wants to create digital portfolios with his students blogs.  The teacher wanted to create a blog page with students titled, My Reads, which launched me on a quest to find a website that students could use to track books they have read and write reviews. 

I didn't want it to be a quest.

It should have been easy. I've used Shelfari and Library Thing. But it wasn't easy and during my quest Elmer Fudd phrases kept popping into my head: Bewieve it or not, I'm hunting a certain wascawwy wabbit /widget.

I tried putting Shelfari's shelf widget on my blog. Pwetty cwafty, eh? Wrong! This is where the wabbit/widget outsmarts me. No matter what I did the Javascript kept deleting when I'd try and post, leaving me only a link. The teacher wanted the visual so students could show parents their digital portfolios during conferences.  Check out Jeff Utecht's great posts on digital portfolios. I  tried the only other social network I know for reading books called, The Library Thing. This too has a widget but the javascript would delete when I embedded the information into my Word Press blog. It acted the same as Shelfari. I worked with the IT department and tried all sorts of ways to get the wily widget to work, but no luck. The quest ended in failure. I was told the widget  wouldn't work.

My alter ego, Elmer Fudd, grabs his hunting rifle and pulls the trigger. Blast! I kill the widget.

Elmer Fudd  was always remorseful after he thinks he killed the wabbit. "Oh what have I done?" he says. "I've killed the wabbit. Poor wittle bunny! Poor wittle bunny." I too, am remorseful. I talk to Nancy Gorneau, grade 3-5 IT Coordinator, who tells me to try Good Reads which is supposed to work with Word Press blogs. It works and looks great! Look at the bottom of my column to the right. The teacher is happy. The IT Department is happy. I am happy. I also wearned my wesson... next time I  have twubble wid widgets I'm finding Nancy.

In2Books

Beware of out-of-control hyperlinks. I have 13 Internet Explorer boxes open from jumping from one link to another.

I have been trying to find an online collaborative project with other librarians. No luck. I found a good website on library curriculum but it was informative not collaborative.

 I would like to do something with books and getting students excited about reading. I found an article on Collaborative Learning Gaining Traction in Classrooms and Libraries by Sarah Amandolare that linked me to the website EPals. From this site I found In2Books which links adults with students' reading books.  The program is for students doing book reviews in grades 3-5. Students choose books from a booklist and write a review.There is a checklist to see if certain story elements are in the review. The students write to another adult about the book they have read. The adult writes back to the student and they discuss the book. The adult has gone through a screening test and the teacher has control of the communication. The review that comes from the adult goes to the teacher who approves it and sends it on to the student. At this point I'm starting to wonder if all these bells and whistles cost money. So I open a few more hyperlinks to add to my collage of cascading open browsers and find that the program is free if you are a Title 1 school in the U.S. and costs $360-$460 US dollars if you are not.

Here's a link to a video explaining the program http://images.epals.com/In2Books_Class_08/Videos/I2BVideo/I2BVideo.htm.

I wiped the browser(s) clean and tried a different track looking up online book clubs. I found one I liked called Spaghetti Book Club. It has a wide range of books and the web interface is easy to use. Two of the bottom links didn't work and when I clicked on the About section it said there were membership fees.

I need to mull over this topic. The In2Books collaborates with adults and I want students to collaborate. The Spaghetti Book Club doesn't collaborate so it doesn't really apply. What would be more valuable? Scott has Pen Pals with grade 2 students in the U.S. and I see the value in it. Perhaps linking with another classroom in the world and sharing reading is the way to go such as the ES 1001 Tales. ES 1001 Tales has a great setup and I could get lots of ideas from it. I used a Wiki a couple of years ago with books and it became too unruly with no organization to the books. I also had problems with students accidentally deleting each others reviews. Of course it didn't help that I didn't know what I was doing. I think the blog setup would work better as a collaborative tool because of the easy way to organize using categories.

Follow up to Google Search Stories

I decided to teach Google search stories video creator after learning about it in class from teacher, Jeff Utecht. After teaching Google search stories video creator to two classes, I decided that I needed to spend more time explaining how to tell a story using the search boxes. I also made a greater effort to touch base with each group several times to see how they were proceeding. With some classes I spent too much time with one group. It worked better if I touched base more frequently giving some guidance on how to write the story; otherwise students would summarize or not choose one book to write about. I also spent too much time with two classes problem-solving computer logon/wireless issues which took too much time away from the learning experience. In later classes if there was a computer issue I set the computer aside and got another laptop dealing with the issue after the class left. This seems like such an obvious solution but I'm surprised how often I lose track of time troubleshooting computers. I've been working on improving my time management of classes. I had a sub for one of the days I had to teach this lesson and I put together a video of how to do it using Camtasia Studio. I thought it would be faster than doing screen shots and typing up the lesson. I'm not sure if it was because it took an hour to make the video. When looking at the videos made by the students who had the sub it looked like they understood the objective. Their videos contained elements of a story.

Here's the video I left for the sub:

 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lWwI-GSDA4[/youtube]

Feedback

One teacher said that over lunch the students were talking about videos they made in library and he asked me how I was able to make a video and have students’ checkout books in 45 minutes. He said the students seemed to really like the lesson. I had another boy afterschool stop by and say, “I was trying to show my Dad my video and couldn’t find it. How do I find them on the Internet?” I showed him and he wrote down how to view them. I'll have to followup with him next week.

I did a survey of one of the classes to get feedback on the lesson.  I got the idea from the comment on my blog and from another blog, the tech volley, where the writer conducted a survey. In my survey, I asked 5th grade students what they learned and most said, “How to make a video.” One wrote: “The Internet has a lot of powers and abilities like humans.” Only one related it to elements of a story. I'll have to continue to work on this part of the lesson.  There were 19 positive and 1 negative comment. The positive comments were: It was fun and easy, I liked choosing songs, I liked working in groups and with friends, “I liked the part where we thought of ideas in the book to type.” Overall, it seemed to be a good lesson that got the students excited about learning and reading.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Kindergarteners remind me of bobbleheads.

Watch the 7 second video of a bubbly boy who is so excited for his turn to use the interactive whiteboard. He is third in line which is why the girl next to him says "no."  

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZY1tN3ycj4[/youtube] 

I created a lesson around the book, A Picture for Harold’s Room, by Crockett Johnson.  Through a PTA grant, I received the Epson Brightlink Interactive Whiteboard in our library. It is like a Smartboard except it uses any surface to project an image. In addition, the screen size can be adjusted which gives me more flexibility with height. For this lesson I scanned all the pages of the book and put them in a PowerPoint.  I read the pages and the students followed along with what was happening in the story by using the white interactive pen to draw in purple. For instance, one student would draw the purple line, another student would draw a house, etc. Each student received a turn with the "purple crayon."

This lesson aids students with comprehension strategies such as sequencing and story retelling. It addresses different learning styles by hearing the story (auditory), seeing the pages projected on the screen (visual) and using the pen to draw what is happening with the story on each page (kinesthetic). At the end of the lesson, students made up their own “purple crayon” stories.

According to Bloom’s taxonomy for digital citizens the lesson moves students to a higher order of thinking that involves creating. In addition, the lesson reinforces what students are doing in Readers Workshop which is story sequencing and retelling. I put together a short video showing the students retelling the story, making up new stories, and figuring out how to use the interactive pen. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmcrbQ6w9fM[/youtube]

There's a video on YouTube of the story that is good but when I showed it first in the lesson to students it made the lesson too long. The students got restless.