Mrs. Bates' 3rd grade students just completed a project that involved book reviews and QR Codes. QR stands for "quick response" code and can be read with most smart phones with a QR code reader app.
Take a look at some of the book reviews that are displayed out in the hallway at Hilliard Horizon. You can scan the QR code with your smart phone if you are using another device to read this post.
Today's post comes from Heather Tucker, 1st Grade Teacher at Hilliard Horizon Elementary
Exploring Changes with VoiceThread
In Social Studies, we are learning about how things have changed over time.
Each student chose a topic they wanted wanted to explore, for example, TV, games, baby dolls, houses, schools, clothing, telephones, etc. We looked for images of each topic on the internet. This helped us compare things from the past and present and how they change over time. Some students even brought in artifacts from home, like a James Brown record! :)
After exploring, students drew a picture of what their topic looked like in the past. Then we really had to use our creative thinking and our new knowledge to come up with a prediction of what we think each thing might look like and what it might do to help us in the future. After drawing our pictures, we wrote down a caption to go with each past, present and future picture. We used the computer webcam to take pictures of our posters and then recorded our comments.
This is such a cool way to share our new knowledge with others! Take a look at some of the VoiceThread projects students created:
Four weeks ago, Mrs. Marsh started a project-based learning experience with her 1st grade students by asking this simple question:
What is a leader?
The project involved aspects of math, social studies, science, and language arts, and featured leaders like our principal, Mr. Blum, and our superintendent of schools, Dale McVey.
Students began by brainstorming different characteristics they thought described a leader and by thinking about important leaders in their lives. They interviewed family members about who they consider leaders and what makes a leader.
Mrs. Marsh had different guest speakers come in to talk about leadership. She coached her students on asking quality interview questions. Mr. McVey shared that you may think you're a leader, but you're not if no one is following you. The students compared the different leadership qualities of the guest speakers and added the information to their research.
While the students continued to research and share ideas, Mrs. Marsh read 6 books that featured 6 different characters that demonstrated some sort of leadership qualities.
After researching what makes a leader and reading each of the books, students worked together in cooperative learning groups. Their task: develop an election campaign for the book character they thought was the best leader.
Students worked on campaign speeches and campaign poster to gear up for the big event: the election.
Next, students campaigned in different precincts (the other 1st grade classrooms) to try and get other students to vote for their book character. They made campaign speeches to try and win the vote.
After the campaigning was done, the voting began. Each precinct voted on one of book characters. As the votes came in, Mrs. Marsh's students tabulated the results:
Somes students were stunned to find that while their book character won in one of the precincts, they did not win the over all vote:
The winner? Molly Lou Mellon!
Overall, the students learned a great deal about leadership and about what leaders do in order to lead others.
Enjoy this VoiceThread of the book character campaign posters and speeches:
Recently, Mackenzie, a 2nd grade student in Mrs. Potter's class, explored VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a social way of sharing your thoughts and ideas with others.
"You can do this anywhere there is a computer," explains Mackenzie. "I can see myself going to different schools' [VoiceThread sites] and talking to different students on their VoiceThread and making comments." Mackenzie and her class learned how readers describe characters by thinking about the character's traits. She also learned that it is important to include evidence from the text when she describes characters.
Take a look at the VoiceThread Mackenzie and her classmates put together. Use the buttons on the bottom of the VoiceThread to navigate between threads.
