Kindergarten Students Create Digital "All About Us" Books
What makes us the same yet different? This was the guiding question behind the collaborative Kindergarten project. Kindergarten students spent this quarter studying similarities and differences between themselves and others. Using lots of stories and books to guide their thinking, students began to see how children can describe themselves with various attributes. Mr. Sandick collaborated with teachers on a graphing lesson using the Smartboard in which students explored attributes of themselves and then shared them with pictographs. They also spent time creating self portraits using craft materials in their classrooms and exploring things they liked and enjoyed. You can view these self-portraits in the digital presentations below. This unit also provided the opportunity to explore aspects of culture. As part of this study students visited the library and listened to a story and viewed a digital resource that provided information about how students around the world get to school. Did you know that some children ride water buffalos??! Now, that is interesting! We imagined what it would be like to ride up to FPG on a water buffalo in the morning instead of coming in a car or bus. Students created print books about cultures as they examined what makes cultures similar and different. (To view the the digital Voicethreads created by each class simply click on the picture below).
Mrs. Wise's Class
Mrs. Martin's Class
Mrs. Wise's Class
Mrs. James' Class
3rd Graders Hold Mock Election - Library Style
The national election had come to a close, but our third graders were just gearing up for their big character election. Watching the events of the Presidential election gave our students lots to talk about and ideas to generate their thinking with this unit. After examining concepts of government and its role in our lives, they specifically focused on the civic duty of citizens and the process of elections. We decided it would be fun to have a book character election and our very own third graders would lead the campaign! We began by completing a character study using the books Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio and Otto Runs for President by Rosemary Wells. After evaluating the two main characters it was decided Grace and Otto would be our two candidates.
As students began to craft their campaigns we led students through a lesson on the purpose of campaign slogans and how to create one to appeal to voters. Students evaluated primary sources by looking over real campaign slogans from past elections to give them a better idea of how to create a strong slogan for their chosen book character. The third grade hallway became campaign headquarters! Before too long there were posters and slogans showin up all over the school. The library was our official polling place and some students even campaigned the day of the election outside the polling place as voters arrived (of course no campaign material was allowed in the polling place). Any class across the school who wished to participate could do so, but they were encouraged to read the books first so they were well informed voters. Before coming in to vote, all participating classes were asked to fill out their voter registration cards and they brought these with them when they checked in to receive their ballot. K-2 classes were given paper ballots and 3-5 classes voted electronically.
We had real voting booths set up in our library polling place and the voters even received "I Voted" stickers when their vote was cast. In the end Otto was a clear winner. It was a landslide victory and he received more than seventy percent of the votes. Take a look below for some pictures and video of our election day!
2nd Grade Market Grand Opening - A Study in Economics
Our 2nd grade classes studied basic economic principles during social studies this quarter. Using fiction and nonfiction texts along with digital resources such as BrainPop and Pebble Go students explored various concepts from "supply and demand" to "wants and needs". Stories such as Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday by Judith Viorst, My Rows and Piles of Coins by Tololwa M. Mollel, and Nothing by Jon Agee were used as read alouds to illustrate these principles and encourage discussion and understanding. This project based unit culminated with a market day held in the second grade hallway. Students spent over a week planning their businesses. They were responsible for deciding if they wanted to provide a good or a service and how much they would charge their consumers. They spent time creating their products and advertisements and even established a bank in the hallway that had our very own Mrs. Shaw as the bank manager (is that a great math specialist or what?) We also included a pre and post assessment to this unit by including a visual graphic. Before the unit ever began and when the unit was over we asked students to write down words that relate to economics on a post-it. It was really wonderful to see their growth from the beginning to the end. I took the students responses and generated a word cloud from them using wordle.net The larger words indicate the word was listed more often by students. You can very clearly see students grasped many of the concepts. The final step to this unit allowed students to capture their learning in the form of a digital book. We used www.littlebirdtales.com to capture the market concepts using real photographs from that special day. You can peek into the fun by exploring the pictures, video, word clouds and digital books below.
Flyer that advertised the market Grand Opening!
Digital Books Capturing the Market Lessons - click on each book to hear that book read aloud by students from the class.
One of the Market's featured businesses.
Mrs. Cole gets her hair and nails serviced at the FPG Spa. Mrs. Maldonado also visited the spa for a nail service.
Picture of Student Post-it With Words Listed
Pre-assessment Wordle Example
Post-Assessment Wordle Example
5th Graders Create Digital Book Reviews
The fifth grade dual language students have been creating digital book reviews for K-2 students using Voicethread. They have been coming in to the library with Ms. Caicedo during their Spanish Special to work on this project each week. After a lesson on elements of good reviews students began working on crafting a writing piece that detailed why someone would want to check-out their chosen book from the library. They used digital cameras to take photos of parts of their book to include as part of their review. The end result is what you see below. Click on the photo to be taken to all the individual voicethreads - from there you can view the voicethreads of your choice. Upon returning in January, 5th graders will share these with the younger students to generate interest in some of these Spanish picture books in our collection.
