Caleb's Creek Media Matters

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Solar System Stories

I promised an update on our solar system stories and here it is! About half of my 3rd grade classes have finished narrating their stories, the other half will be over the rest of this week, but here are a couple examples of what I have been talking about!

Didn't they do a great job? Here are some photos from the recording session. I would definitely do this project again, but try to get the kids to use more of the information they researched in the story itself. I have to give credit to Jessica Moore and Winter Park Elementary School for the idea. I went to a session at NCSLMA about her digital story and that is what inspired me to give this a try! Thanks for sharing with us Winter Park!

Mrs. Hentz filling in for absent students

Finished Product!

Monday, May 7, 2012

Solar System update

I talked about our ongoing solar system project before, but we are getting back to it in the media center now to create the photostories this week. In a nutshell, they started with research about the planets with me, moved on to write the stories in character education (incorporating bullies, character ed topics, etc), illustrated the stories in art, and performed SchoolHouse Rock including Interplanet Janet in music class. Now, it has come back to me and we will be narrating the stories this week using Photostory, though there are tons of other programs you could also use. Today I was photographing their illustrations to start the photostory project so they are ready for them to narrate and was so excited about some of the pictures! I have not read the stories yet, I wanted to hear the students tell them for the first time, but if the pictures are any indication, I think they will be great! We are so excited about this project. I will post again on the results when they are finished, but here is some of the artwork I got today.

I love the french beret by the Eiffel Tower

'News' About the Smokies

Researching with the livebinder

A 4th grade class is reading The Egypt Game, set in the Smoky Mountains, so we did a quick project on the Smokies with them. They used my livebinder to locate a topic that interested them and researched that topic. After research, they had to create a newscast script and practice it with a partner. The kids taped each other and came up with their newscast on different aspects of the Smokies. They love taping each other and having an end project like this made them have to really understand their topic so they could talk about it. I love projects that give kids some understanding of real life possible applications for learning how to do things!