Black History Project Idea - Sensory Figures in Google Drawings

Sensory figures is an interactive notebook assignment that I have seen used in Social Studies notebooks in the past.

They recently popped back up in my thoughts after having a conversation with another teacher about digitally presenting research that wouldn't take a long time to complete.

The idea hit at the perfect time for me because I am taking a Tony Vincent online course this winter. For our first week assignment we had to use some of the highlighted tools in Week 1 to make any graphic we wanted. I decided to flesh out the idea of a digital sensory figure, created in Google Drawings, to showcase student Black History research projects.

I used Google Drawings as the canvas, changing the dimensions to a printable format. I used Google search tools to find royalty free images. The pictures were uploaded to the site remove.bg to remove the backgrounds.The speech bubbles were created using the Google drawings shape tool and the curved font, around the arm of Martin Luther King, Jr. and dress of Elizabeth Keckley, was made on the site PicFont.

https://twitter.com/tonyvincent/status/1110859006682124288?s=20

Having made the first two (pictured above) as test cases I think it is doable with students grade 3 (with some modifications) and up. I would expect that the older the grade level the more meaningful and deep the "sensory dialogue" would become. My biggest concern is the multiple tech components. Students would have no problem finding a picture but using remove.bg, editing if necessary, downloading and uploading a picture to Google Drawings might be time consuming the first time. The speech bubbles and typing won't be difficult but creating the curved font would be (that could always be changed to a simple title though). This is all after students have read related biographical articles and synthesized the information into "sensory dialogue" (which might take some practice).

I am on a mission to try it with a class in February so stay tuned for a more realistic update 😉. If you wind up trying it before me, please let me know how it went either in the comments below or on Twitter, tagging me @atechcoachlife.

Comments

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Rock Cycle Activity

Today I got to spend the day with a 3rd grade science teacher doing a rock cycle activity. She had asked for help a couple of weekends ago to find some engaging rock cycle activities for her students. I quickly did a Pinterest search and came up with a link to a middle school blog where they featured a fun looking rock cycle station activity. That website took me to the originating activity site - Illinois State Museum Geology Online and their Ride the Rock Cycle activity . I read through it and felt it was doable for third graders (although I was a little nervous about the cartooning). I offered my help and we put together the activity. The kids did it WONDERFULLY. It was one of those lesson you wish was observed (but of course never is :) They are on an alternating science schedule so she only had two of the four classes today but it was a good sampling of children. She had one class that had a high portion of struggling learners and the second class had a high

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Search This Blog