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.