Tech EXPO 2015

Our school district recently had their technology expo and the two schools I work at had a tables to showcase our awesome work in 21st century learning. Pictures from the night are below. I really enjoyed working with the teachers who volunteered that night. We had a BLAST!

What would the Easter Bunny say?

Kinder students are so stinkin cute. I worked with them again this week and we worked on a response to the prompt "What would the Easter Bunny say if he/she could talk?" Instead of just a regular written response we turned it into a quick video with ChatterPix. If we do it again I would want the kids to draw their own bunnies but there was no time this week.



Sam from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

Victoria from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

Mythology Brought to Life

This fifth grade class did awesome on their mythology unit. Here is a previous post on that.  I am so proud of how these character videos turned out. Here are just a few of the students' work.

Minatour

IMG 0110 from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

Medusa

IMG 0105 from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

King Romolus

IMG 0123 from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

Medusa

IMG 0127 from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

Feeling Excited about Mythology and ChatterPix

I have a fifth grade teacher that wanted to bring her students in and do something technology related with the mythologies and folktales they were reading.  We came up with a lesson of a video where the character explains events from the story from their point of view. I was set to go buy clip art of mythology characters but the teacher thought "Let's ask the kids to draw them." I  went along with it but in the back of my mind I thought we would get a lot of pictures that looked like smashed jack-o-lanterns.  Boy was I wrong. She brought both of her reading classes in and had them draw the character faces in KidPix and these kids took their jobs seriously.  Their drawing were so good.  I told the teacher that you could tell just from the drawings if the students comprehended the stories by the details they were adding to their portraits.  They were already considering the character's perspective as they drew.  I snapped some shots of some of the kids at work. You can see them below. After everyone is finished drawing we are going to use ChatterPix to add voice recordings and the kids will record there character talking about their role in the myth or folktale. I can't wait to see how these turn out.

First grade Compound words

I worked with a first grade class on a lesson with compound words.  They came up with the cutest drawings to illustrate their words.  Check it out.


1st Grade Compound Words from Nikki Polk on Vimeo.

Civics with Sock Puppets

Our kindergarten classes are wrapping up their Social Studies unit where they learn about symbols found in their community.  Part of the unit was on flags. They are taught how to identify the United States and state flags. The teacher and I decided to do some app smashing and had the kids draw one of the flags and talk about it.  We used the apps Hello Crayons and Sock Puppets. They turned out really cute. Here is an example. Super Easy and we had so much fun.

Little Bird Tale

A second grade teacher asked me if I could do a lesson with her class. They are studying animal life cycles particularly the ladybug life cycle.  I immediately thought of Little Bird Tales. It's free, super quick to set up a class, and super easy for the kids to create a video. Here is an example of some of the work her kids did. They really jumped in and made some outstanding work. The teacher was so impressed with how fast her kids were able to catch on, she said she would complete the project on her own. I LOVE when that happens. It means my lesson was truly twofold; the students learned and created and the teacher left feeling empowered.

• Click to view my tale.
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