Monday, November 5, 2018

This Week's Adventures!

Each week is so full of learning adventures, I am going to get better at documenting them.  How?  Via this blog.  We'll see how that goes!

During their tech time this week, first and second graders will learn the art of error analysis, also known as debugging.  For the launch we're using math problems so they can get the idea of looking for mistakes that are kinda obvious.  From there, we'll launch into the one, the only, Angry Birds!  (Gotta love code.org!)

Third graders are wrapping up their most recent read-aloud by creating a reading strategies map on Explain Everything and then uploading it to Seesaw to share with their families.  This is the first time I've gotten to use Explain Everything with their community and it was awesome.  Seriously.  The ideas that started flowing from the teachers once they saw how EE worked was inspiring.

Toontastic debuted in fourth grade last week, and they're finishing it this week, as a means to tell their first fully finished short stories.  There was a unique twist, though, as some of these so-called short stories were a tad too long for Toontastic, so we're trying out a mashup of Tootnastic, Voice Recorder, and iMovie.  Keep you posted on that....

You have to check out the PSAs our 5th graders finished - they used a variety of tools to create said PSAs in an effort to convince people to vote.  Which at this point, if you're of voting age, should be a non-negotiable.  We introduced Adobe Spark and Telestory, and revisited Stop Motion Animation and DoInk for that project.
Go Vote!

Here.  Watch the PSAs.  You won't regret it!

Speaking of PSAs, our 8th graders are knee deep in one of the biggest projects of the year - raising awareness for local charitable and non-profit organizations.  Continuing this week is the work on creating PSAs, Infographics, and other multi-media tools to shine the spotlight on their chosen organizations.