iMovie Book Trailers

We flex group for reading interventions which means that 3 days a week for 30 minutes I have 45 students in my room. Now being in a classroom that has no walls (we are an open school), I have to get creative on my projects because it can get pretty rowdy pretty quickly. We began with novel studies. I had 5 novels running and I needed a project that could be simple to learn because not all of the students in this group are as tech savvy as my own class. So I decided to use iMovie and create book trailers. Now all group members had to come together after reading the novel and create a trailer that summarized their book without giving too much away.

I had my ITF (instructional technology facilitator) come in to help me because I had so many varying levels of tech ability.

We worked and learned a lot through this first project. We also learned a lot about iMovie and we know what we would do differently when making book trailers again. Enjoy!

Rocks, Rocks and More Rocks

Continuing on with our study of the rock cycle, today we made edible rocks to demonstrate metamorphic, sedimentary and igneous rocks.

For the igneous rocks we took chocolate chips and melted them in the crockpot. Once the chips were melted, we scooped it out onto wax paper and allowed it to cool and harden just like igneous rocks.

For the sedimentary rocks we used graham crackers, then covered the graham cracker with icing, mixed in some sprinkles and added a swedish fish candy as a fossil. We repeated this process 2 more times and then stacked all of the layers together to create sedimentary rocks. 

Last but not least we created metamorphic rocks using Starburst. We started of with three different Starburst candies. We unwrapped them and put them into a baggie. We then used the heat and pressure of our hands to melt the Starbursts and morph them together. 

We really enjoyed learning, making and eating our new "rocks". 

Paper Chibi's...Ever heard of them???

Ever heard of Paper Chibi's? Paperchibilite is an app that allows you to make a 3D avatar that you can create to look like you. Once you create them, you print, fold and glue. It is a lot of fun and easy to do. 

I allowed the students to play around and create. Some created Chibi's that looked like themselves while others took a more creative approach.


We use the Chibi's for different things. We use them for storytelling on GreenScreen, use them to track our reading stamina, use them to display our work. There are many uses for Paper Chibi's. 

Try them...you will like them 😃

Book Character Project

For the first nine weeks of school we focus on characters and their traits. In third grade we did the Pumpkin Book Project. 

So in fourth grade we needed something new. One day I was scrolling through Instagram land and I stumbled upon @hellojenjones. She posted about using @piccollage to create a poster for their book character. 

I followed her directions and created a Google Slide with directions for my students to create.  Here are a few of our projects.  

Coding Fun Using The Foo's

The Foo's is an awesome website to start to learn the basics of coding. My students are going to be coding a rock that moves through the rock cycle. Before we could begin, I needed to teach my students what coding is and a couple of the basics.

We began with playing Simon Says. Simon Says is a great way to introduce coding. It teaches the students to follow simple commands like coding. Once we "mastered" Simon Says we moved onto The Foo's.

I dropped the link to The Foo's in their Google Classroom. I then let them go and they took off with it! I didn't give them any instructions and I just let them play. They caught on very quickly and were advancing through the levels faster than I could see them play. They were cheering and were just very excited about it! The excitement is what it is all about. They begged for indoor recess so they play and when we went to computer lab, the wanted nothing but The Foo's. 

 

Oreo Phases and Some Singing...Kind of

We began our phases of the moon unit with a little Oreo fun. We attempted to sing a song (which we needed more time on lol) and then we ate shaped the phases of the moon.

I've learned that singing songs really helps the content to stick a little better. Even though we need WAY MORE practice 😏

The Great Postcard Exchange

This year I decided to jump on the postcard exchange bandwagon and it turned out to be so exciting! my kiddos came in every day asking "Did we get a postcard today?".

The start to this journey I first had to find postcards. In my mind this was going to be a piece of cake...wrong again!! Believe it or not postcards are very hard to come by. I called 7 different stores and no postcards. Finally when I called the 8th store (which was going to be my last one) success!! So I ran to that store right after work I went in and bought 55 postcards (extras for mess ups). When I went to check out at the register the ladies looked at me like I was crazy. Once I explained they were in awe over the concept. 

When I went to school the next morning, I explained to the kids that we needed to write and mail these postcards to all the states. So we spent the week writing this postcards for morning work. 

We wrote and wrote and wrote some more...

We mailed them off and then we waited. Within the first week our 1st card came. Colorado you made us very excited!!

Postcards started coming quickly so I needed a way to display our postcards. I found this really cute US and World Maps in the Target Dollar Spot. Our map is filling up quickly.

Research to GreenScreen

After researching, we took all of our research and turned it into a newscast and did a little GreenScreen action. @Doink is a great app that is so easy to use and the students learn how to navigate it quickly. 

We spent one day working with a partner to write a script where the students were to interview a Native American showcasing all of the information that they learned through their research.

Once their scripts were completed it was time to memorize and record. Not bad for our first attempt. 

Longhouses

To go along with our studies on Native Americans, my kiddos built Longhouses and we put the houses together to create a village. The students took what they learned through their research and applied it to creating their own houses. They turned out phenomenal!! Check them out for yourself. 

Learning to be Googley

Googley??? Is that a word? In our class it is. 

This was our first task where we had to learn how to toggle between multiple tabs to create our Google Slides. We began our social studies unit learning about various tribes in North Carolina. Each group was assigned a tribe to become experts on. As they researched and gathered information, they had to enter it into a basic graphic organizer that was in their Google Classroom. I kept it basic because learning to be Googley can be difficult. 

I thought that this would be an easy task, but boy was I wrong! I had to start with the basics of showing them how to toggle between tabs (without closing the tabs). Working and transferring information between four tabs is quite the task for a 10 year old. So after a day of learning to navigate... they were working away and gathering all the needed information for part 2 of our project...GreenScreen 

Using the graphic organizer in Google allowed them to collaborate and help each other research. It was really cool to see them working together while working independently. 

Help Harry

Our first STEM challenge of the year was called Help Harry. Usually we start the year off with Save Fred, but because some of my 3rd graders came with me to 4th grade, I had to change things up a bit. I really wanted to focus on the engineering component when I stumbled across this awesome activity from @fourthgrstudio. It was a great way to start the year off. We had many different designs and it was great to see how much they changed from 3rd grade!

Back at it

So I've been a little MIA lately, but now I am back and in the swing of things. I have moved grade levels (from 3rd to 4th) and we have been busy to say the least. We have had a great start to our year. We have created a TON and we've been channeling our inner singers with songs thanks to @Teachingandsofourth .

I am going to be sharing/catching you up on all of the amazing work we have done since the beginning of time of 4th grade.

We started our year off with Ignite Presentations. Have you all heard of Ignite Presentations??? Ignite Presentations in a nutshell:

* 20 slides total

*15 seconds each

* Auto advancing

* 5 minutes…I mean who can't sit through 5 minutes?

These used to be made using PowerPoint...but I am a Google fan and our county is GAFE all the way. So I talked with my husband @smarkwith (who is a Google Ninja by the way 😉) and he created a template using Google Slides. The cool part about it...he was able to replicate the Ignite features! 

Our first project was learning about our beautiful state of North Carolina. My kiddos did their research, collaborated together and then created and presented their final projects. You can tell this occurred at the beginning of the year because they were all quiet and shy when presenting. 

 Check it out. 

Ignite Presentation