Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

  One of my favorite online creation tools is Book Creator . It allows students to create interactive multimedia ebooks based off classroom assignments. The FREE version allows teachers to have one library with 40 books. Teachers can archive libraries and delete books and reset the library count to 40 as needed. Obviously the ideal situation is to get a classroom, school, or district subscription  and it is something to recommend to administrators, PTA's, or even make a grant pitch for.  I am a certified Google Trainer and Book Creator has very generously offered up their 1,000 book library deal to anyone with that designation, which makes it very nice for training purposes. Here are a few books I have made for demonstration purposes: Plastic Bags   Showing Respect in the Halls (Comic Example) Choose Your Own Adventure Style Book Biography (Bessie Coleman) Community Helpers (link to Facebook post...this is a project I completed with a kindergarten class) Because I...

  I recently worked with a Media Specialist to recreate a project she saw on Twitter  with second graders. It was ridiculously cute!  We used green masks ( Amazon link  - these masks didn't have a white strip on the top or bottom), a green screen (we had a popup green screen but green cloth would work), and the Doink green screen iPad app  (worth the $4.99 price tag...you can use it on an iPhone or iPad). We replaced student mouths with animal mouths in conjunction with the read aloud "What If You Had Animal Teeth?" The book features ten animal mouths but we reduced student choices to eight. I tested out all the animal mouths on us first to have samples for the students and to see which ones might give us the most trouble. The narwhal and the rattlesnake were hard to manipulate so we pulled them as choices.  Most of the students selected the same thing - sharks and tigers - which was a little disappointing because the elephant one was so adorable. To add va...

I was working with a second grade class the other day using the Google Pages app (we used/modified the visual report template within Pages to create an animal report) . I was telling the teacher about the "magic move" feature in the Keynote app (free) and how it could be used to create a cute adaptations video. I created the above sample project to show her and also to test if I thought her second graders could handle it (there is no sound). Her second graders could definitely do it. I think the problems would come up with research and writing. Students would have to find 5-10 adaptations to highlight (I think I only came up with seven or eight for the penguin in this video). Second graders researching and reading skills are a bit all over the board, which is why I thought this step might need to be differentiated (high readers can pick their own animals, middle readers can choose from a list of animals and you can give them links to find the adaptations,emerging reade...

Check out the Berry College Bald Eagle Cam at  http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/ It is super addictive! I love showing it to children and having them make observations in the nest. Right now there is a little chick under the eagle and students get excited when the eagle moves and they can catch a glimpse of it. They are less thrilled with the dead fish and squirrels but it does reinforce the food chain :).

I saw a goal list on Pinterst (see first picture) and I thought it would make a good research collection template for students (what student wouldn't love working with post-it notes!). I created a template for upper grade levels (collection of six facts - using 11x17 paper) and a template for lower grade levels (collection of four facts - using 8 1/2 x 11 paper).  I printed out 24 copies of each on card stock and laminated them. I worked with third graders using them to collect biographically information for a black history project and with first graders collecting facts about habitat specific animals.  The idea, in my mind at least, was that these collection boards would allow for more research and collection opportunities in the classroom...other then the typical 1-2 a year.  Here is what I learned... 1. The third graders really didn't know how to gather pertinent information. They were a bit all over the board with their facts so I ...

This was my attempt at make a "cell" phone. It didn't turn out too badly. It got a laugh out of a fifth grade class who saw it. I am going to be doing this activity with a fifth grade class soon and I'll post pictures of their finished product and let you know how it goes. I gave them some apps on the front page to decorate once they are finished the "cell" part of the activity (so earlier finishers have something to do). These could be easily glued on the right hand side of any notebook.

I saw this on Pinterest and laughed out loud, after I was done I thought mmmm....this might make a good right hand notebook assignment. You could get a template of a cell phone and students would have to create a "cell" phone. It can be glued into the right hand side of your notebook. I showed it to a friend who teaches 5th grade (where cells are introduced in the standards) and she was all game to do this with her kids. I am in the process of trying to put together a template to use with her class and will post when I am done.

In one of my schools fourth graders are working with a local Audubon club to explore birds (as part of their Organisms and their Environment unit). This week they are working on dissecting owl pellets. I put together this short (6 minute) video about owl pellets for the children to watch prior to the activity so they would have some frame of reference going into it. Basically I found several YouTube videos and downloaded them. I put them together using Windows Movie Maker Live into one longer video for the kids. In conjunction with watching the video students will also work on a virtual owl pellet dissection on this site -  http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/flash/v4/index.htm . This will all take place the day before the actual owl pellet activity. I am curious to see how the video and virtual experience will compare to the actual owl pellet dissection (having never done it myself!). I'm going to ask students to compare the two and tell me if they felt that...

Looking to have a little fun with your students just before Halloween? Try taking a break from your regular science class (or you can even do this in your ELA block if you can't go "off task" in your science class) and introduce them to the wonderful world of bats. In ELA you can read the story Stellaluna or, if you want, show it on your Interactive White Board. The website Storyline Online has a member of the Screen Actor's Guild reading it aloud. You can actually download the video of it from YouTube with your YouTube Downloader (you can get the downloader from this site - CLICK HERE ). After the story have students write down some facts they learned about bats. Next show the video The Magic School Bus: Going Batty . The full episode can be found on YouTube and can be downloaded using the YouTube downloader. Please watch the entire video (22 minutes) before showing it to your class. I show Magic School Bus videos from Discovery Streamline Education so I ...

I visited my family this past week and took my neice (age 7) to Zion National Park in Utah to work on her Junior Ranger Badge. As part of the requirements she had to attend a ranger led program and we opted for the Amazing Animals talk about bears. I got a little nervous when Ranger Colton put the vocabulary words on the board (see first picture) but I thought he did a great job of explaining what each of them meant and getting input from the children. I also liked his graph representing the diet of the black bear - shading in 70% for plants, 20% for water creatures, and 10% for large game (see the board in the last picture). He had a bear skin and talked about the adaptations they had for being successful in their environment - claws, fur, and teeth that were both flat and pointed for grinding plants and chewing meat. The program was 45 minutes long and he had children go outside to participate in an activity where they became bla...

This is part of my "pull out" mania this year. I thought it would be fun for students to draw an environment complete with at least three animals and two plants and then discuss adaptations they have that help them survive in that environment on the pull out tab.

This idea was loosely based on something I saw on Pinterest . I had the child pick an animal at the top of the food chain and create a food chain inside its belly. In hindsight she probably didn't need to have the tiger represented (since it was already represented by the drawing). This would fall under 5th grade standards here in South Carolina and I am thinking of how it could be modified to represent fossil fuels in our energy unit.

Sorry I have been absent a bit this past month. With school winding down there has been a lot to do! I have been working on some right hand assignment ideas and borrowed some fourth graders to help me out. This one was adapted from a hallyway display I saw outside a second grade classroom (see third picture). I thought it could be easily adapted and used in a notebook.

I've recently become addicted to the Cornell Ornithology Lab here at this SITE . The site features live streaming of two web cams set up - one watching a red-tailed hawk nest and one watching over a blue heron nest. Both nests have fairly recently hatched young that can be observed.  I took screen shots of both nests above. You can even ask questions online to volunteers who man the IM board. I showed them to a second grade class I was covering and I had them make inferences about the weather, habitat, and eating habits based on what they could observe (the red tail hawk usually has some dead mouse or bird in the nest which always makes a site much "cooler" in the eyes of the kids). Careful when watching...it is VERY addictive :)

I was lesson planning with the teacher in the second grade class I talked about in the last post (she was introducing habitats to her students). She was looking for some ideas so I taught her a song I learned from a training and we worked out a foldable her students could do. I liked that she had them write full sentences in the top flap of the foldable and they had to pick and justify one of the habitat requirements. I also did the same song with hand gestures in my fourth grade class in conjunction with their study of how environmental factors affect population growth. It doesn't matter what grade.... they all liked getting up to sing and move. Our standards tend to repeat every other year so what students are learning in 2nd grade get repeated more in depth in 4th and 6th grade.

I worked with a second grade teacher this past Friday during one of her TAP observations. She had set her lesson up in science stations and asked me to oversee and troubleshoot the computer station if needed. I really liked her stations because they incorporated reading, writing, technology and a hands-on activity. All stations were about 10 minutes in length. My favorite part of the lesson was her accountability sheet that the students took from station to station. You can find a copy of the sheet HERE . The lesson was on Arctic Habitats. Station 1 – Read and response. Students read a sheet that she got from Enchanted Learning about reindeer and they had to answer the questions that went with it. When they were done, or had to move stations, they stapled their reindeer sheet to the accountability sheet. Station 2 – Computer station. Students watched a six minute BrainPop Jr. video and took the quiz that went with it. They recorded their quiz score on the sheet that traveled ...

One of the classes I work with has just started their Organisims and their Environment unit. The first thing I usually do with this unit is place a plant next to me and tell children that we are both considered organisims. I have them work in table groups and try to come up with ways they think we are similar (we just became a TAP school so that opening would hit "questioning" and "grouping" on the rubric). I remember one year a good argument came up in class where one table group said that we are similar because we both move. This led to a girl saying that plants only move if acted upon by another source (i.e. the wind). That led to another person saying that she visited a sunflower patch with her mom and that the sunflowers move to follow the path of the sun. I love those kind of "thinking and sharing" arguments :) In our standards students only have to know five characteristics that organisims share. I made a Promethean flipchart that covers the five ...

This short (5 minute) video walks the viewer on how to put together the popsicle puzzle project. To see the tech part of it, please see an earlier video on the subject.

Here is a short video (4 minutes) explaining how to do the tech part of the popsicle puzzle project.

I like the idea of using brown bags in the notebook. I think the original post was for younger children but I think it could easily be ramped up for an upper level group of children. One fourth grade class at my school doing an animal research project in ELA (working in collaboration with what students are learning in science). I was thinking that the students could use index cards to take their notes while researching. They would use the note cards to write their paper in ELA but instead of throwing out the cards they could be "housed" inside these brown bags in their science notebooks.