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Showing posts from February, 2014

Fun Foldable

I'm always up for a fun foldable and I got one from a friend of mine. She got it from a museum course she took with her daughter and snagged a couple of templates for me (Yay! Thanks Nichelle :) It seems a bit complicated with all the mountain and valley folds but I have used it with several fourth grade classrooms and they got the hang of it pretty easily. It can be used with any topic. I choose magnets because the finished foldable reminded me of a bar magnet. To get a  free copy of the foldable template check out my GOOGLE SITES HERE .

Blabberize Explorer Tech Project

I recently worked with two teachers helping to put together a research project using www.blabberize.com as the presentation method (the subject was explorers - grade level 4th). Blabberize is a free website that allows you to manipulate the mouths of pictures to make them "talk" with your recorded voice. Click on the picture to see how the site works and a sample of an "explorer interview" or CLICK HERE ) The first group of children used two pictures - one of them and one of their explorer and recorded their voices. They turned out fine although we had a lot of problems with the microphones. Based on my experience with the first group I introduced a change to the project for the second group. Students had to conduct an "interview" with an explorer. The program can handle a total of 10 scenes so that meant that five questions could be asked. The teacher and I had to explain and model good interviewing skills. The kids did extremely well and if it

February Tech Newsletter

Two posts this week! My February tech newsletter is up on my google site - HERE.  Lots of good ideas for how to present research topics. Enjoy!

Reading Tables/Graphs Practice Idea

Every Monday and Friday I would pull up the weather channel's 10 day forecast for our city. I would have dry erase markers and boards at the table and would ask a series of questions based on the data. - What day will have the highest temperature? - What day will have the lowest temperature? Or what day are you going to have to dress the warmest? - What is the difference between those temperatures? (math!) - What day(s) has the greatest chance of rain? Or what day are we most likely to have indoor recess? - What day(s) has the lowest chance of rain? - What day is going to be the windiest? - What day is going to have the greatest drop between their day and evening temperature? I always look at the weather so I figure why not make it a classroom thing! Luckily we studied weather in the fourth grade so it was easy to incorporate it in my lessons but even if I taught a "non-weather grade" I would still do it. It was amazing to see how difficult it was for the k