iPads in 4th Grade: Week 1

My school lent my classroom five iPads last week to see if I could find things to do with them. If I can then they might make them more widely available for other upper elementary classrooms. Our class get to use them for three weeks and then I have to give them up. In the meantime I've been asked to make weekly reports on how I used them. Since I haven't written on my blog since I changed schools this summer, I thought this would be a great place to put my write-ups.

This post will highlight two things I did this week:
1) Making Book Trailers
2) Creating a Youtube Playlist of Math Tutorials

1) Making Book Trailers
One of our big social studies themes is "Our World of Rights and Responsibilities." Since we live in the Czech Republic, we tie this theme to the region's recent communist past. We have guest speakers, we went to a Stalin era Hard Labour Camp, and we read Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin.

Spoiler Alert: The title refers to a bust of Stalin

We did a lot of work processing the text, and we even wrote scripts for several of the chapters. I was going to leave it there though because it would take too long to film and it would have been very difficult to split up into groups. Then the iPads came, and I decided we would could film using the iMovie Trailer templates. I've talked about book trailers using iMovie before. And it's a lot easier to make the trailers on an iPad than a laptop. There is much less of a learning curve with the iPad iMovie, and everything is more efficient since the iPad is both the video camera and the editor. 

There are three templates in iMovie that (kind of) fit the tone of the book:

Although to be fair, "Narrative" is really the only one that fits the tone.

I showed the trailer templates to the class, split them into three groups, and when their group decided on the template I gave them a storyboard. Writing the storyboard for the trailer: Narrative, Adrenaline, and Expedition. I made the storyboards rather than convert the iMovie storyboards into pdf files. I did this because in the past kids get too caught up on the extra information on the iMovie storyboards. For example, they would think that a "Landscape" shot would have to be a landscape. So my storyboards stripped all of that extra information out. While they were storyboarding their trailer, I made a trailer for them to show how we replace the film footage and the words of the template but keep the music and the pace:

I was tempted to do "The Making of The Making of..." trailer after this one.

We started filming the trailers on Friday. 

I'll report on how they turned out next week.

2) Creating a Youtube Playlist of Math Tutorials

Part 1: Use the drawing and recording features of Explain Everything.
One of the best ways I can think of to have the children demonstrate their thinking is get them to make tutorials for each other. We started the week using the Explain Everything app for our math tutorials and uploading them to our Youtube channel directly from the app. 

Part 2: Use some advanced features of Explain Everything.
By the end of the week I showed them how to embed videos into their presentations. Several of them attempted to take videos of themselves using base 10 blocks to illustrate a math concept, playing the video during their screencast, and working out the problem along side the video.
The below video features a mathematical mistake. We'll examine the mistake on Monday. 

The videos are not just an interesting alternative to teach others, but can also be used to explore our own misconceptions. 

10 Ways I Enhanced My Classroom With Tech This Year

Last year I wrote 10 posts outlining how I tried to enhance my classroom with technology. My thought is that if I can think of at least 10 things that I did differently each year, then I'm doing a decent job keeping up with my professional development in this area.

So I will commit to this every year.

Unfortunately this kind of commitment means I'll never go home early

The difference for this year though is that instead of writing 10 separate posts, I'm writing a single post outlining everything. Many of these in this list already have their own post or presentation though so I reference them whenever possible.

This year's class

Here we go:

10) Sign Up Genius
I was the Elementary After School Activity Coordinator at Lincoln. If you've never tried being an activities coordinator, you can get roughly the same experience by going down this slide twice a day for a year:

This was not one of the activities offered

Automating signups was a late revelation for me, and saved me a lot of hassle. After automation I was only going down this slide once a day. I looked around a lot, and Signup Genius was the easiest, the prettiest, and the free-est.

9) Class Economy Tech Products
There should be a post about this in the future.
I get all of my class economy ideas either directly or indirectly from my students. This year was the first year my students and I made a huge transition on what was possible to sell. Students started selling Garage Band songs that they created, Scratch digital stories, and short films. They emailed their customers not only their purchases, but thank you letters and promotions.

Songs are much lighter to carry around too.

8) Using Back Channels
I go over this as much as memory allows in the link above.

7) The Class Online Newspaper
Posteous is dead. Long live Posterous.

6) Individual Blogs
Why on Earth would anyone choose to make a Google Site if they have access to Blogger?

5) Edmodo and the 4 rooms
I love Edmodo, except that it's clunky and linear and doesn't really do what I want.

4) Teaching Authenticity
This is one of the ideas I presented in my NESA presentation this Spring. I thought that this summer I'd create a great big database of fake websites as a fantastic resource. It appears that everyone under the sun already had this idea though. Anyway, it was the first year I taught fake websites.

3) Teaching Searching
Another component from my NESA presentation this Spring.

2) Class Website
This stretches the definition of "new" I guess. I've had class websites before. The year before last I did not, but I brought it back this year with a vengeance... filling it with everything under the sun, until electricity and internet outages suspended it in January. After that there didn't seem really a demand to bring it back. Still, for that first semester, it was awesome.

As awesome as this photo

1) Saying Goodbye....
Being an International student is hard in that it always seems like you're either just fitting in to a new setting, or saying goodbye. This year one of our students left without having the chance to say goodbye. I therefore designated a day for the kids to make whatever they wanted- cards, movies, reflections, songs, digital stories, slideshows, or whatever else they could think of- to make for the departed student so that they could each say their goodbye properly, in their own way.

My Class Economy Part 6: A Study In Advertising Genres

It's been a while since I've hit the pause button on this series, so here's a quick review of what I've done so far:
Part 1: My Class Economy- an Introduction

Part 2: Creating Meaningful Classroom Jobs
Creating classroom jobs that kids will be both interested in and learn from

Part 3: Managing Accounts, Writing Checks, Workshops, and Bonuses
Learning how to deposit and withdraw money from our bank.

Part 4: What Does It Mean To Produce Something?
Videos, Books, and Field Trips to help us prepare to be Entrepreneurs

Part 5: The Christmas Firings
The mid-year switch from "Government Jobs" To Entrepreneurs

So now that we're caught up, let's dive into part 6: The study of advertising genres.

The Power of Slogans and Logos

The first thing I do in January is ask students to identify this:

I've taught this in approximately 397 countries, and they all get it. 
But the recognition of simple images is only one part of the lesson. 
The other part is when someone groans. Because they're hungry. Because they see that slogan and it reminds them of food.
That's amazing.
And that's a great hook when I introduce commercial genres with something I call, "Tasty and Delicious":

So that's how I use the idea of logos (and eventually slogans) to transition into commercial genres. The genres are the real meat of this lesson. Because you can take a single product... let's say socks... and package it in a different genre to appeal to different types of people.

These socks are for those that love adventure.

These socks will make your life better and more fun.

These socks are for those that love to look cool.

These socks are for those who have a sense of humor.

These socks are action-packed!

But wait... these are all the same brand of sock!

If only they exploded

I eventually split the kids up into small groups, give each group a bunch of print ads, and see if they can define a genre from them. Genres like those listed above are fairly easily discovered. But there are some tricky ones. Specifically the idea of transfer or what my students eventually call metaphor.

This one is for face cream

Eventually we move into commercials and identify multiple genres in an advertisement:

This one seems to have elements that appeal to everyone

We watch and study a lot. We try to identify the slogans and logos. We try to identify the genre or genres. And we try to see how well the ad connects with us regardless of the product so we can identify which genres are most effective on us. 

Then we start writing. By this time the kids have an idea of what they want to sell, and they'll try to write an ad for it. I'll usually give them a choice. For example, either write a humor ad or an action ad. 

After they write an ad, I give them a choice of different genres using their same product. For example, 

either write a lookin' cool ad or a metaphor ad.

After they've written three scripts in three different genres, we work on revising and combining the genres until we have a polished product. That's the hard part. The fun part comes immediately after when we start to film. 

Using Back Channels During A Vow Of Silence

This past year, 4th grade held their second annual No-Talk-A-Thon; a vow of silence fundraiser to help support our sister school.

Based on the book No Talking 

by Andrew Clements

We used Class Dojo to keep track of the hours we kept silent. For every hour we were silent, the child added a point to their avatar.

And everyone chose hours they were comfortable with

This year I deliberately tried to use back channels as a main medium of communication throughout the day, along with individual whiteboards and pantomiming. When the kids entered the classroom, the morning message directed them to look at their emails. They were then greeted with this message:

Hi everyone,

And welcome to our day of silence. To help us with our day of silence, I've set up some special rooms for us. I'll explain all of them before we begin.

General Discussions

http://todaysmeet.com/lsgeneral

Work Related Discussions (Writing, Math, etc)
            http://todaysmeet.com/lswork
Class Story: Told In 3 Word Chunks
            http://todaysmeet.com/lsstory

Book Clubs:
Clues In The Woods

http://todaysmeet.com/lsclues

Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

http://todaysmeet.com/lshotel

The Westing Game

http://todaysmeet.com/lsgame

Good luck with your fund raising!

Sincerely,

Mr. Ryan

I'll explain what these virtual rooms were and how they turned out.*
General Discussions
I thought it was important to have a room for general chatting. We didn't have many opportunities to use this, and the kids preferred their individual white boards when "talking" during break or between subjects. However it was used to communicate thoughts to the whole class. For example, one student needed to tell the class that the third graders were trying to get her to talk, so it was a nice warning system.
Rating: 3 out of 5 General Stars 

Work Related Discussions
This was probably a good idea. But because of the way the lessons were scheduled on this day, outside of Book Club (which had its own discussion rooms) there really wasn't a need for peer discussion.
Rating: 2 out of 5 cubicles

Class Story
This idea was lifted directly from the book No Talking. But instead of speaking, we wrote a story in 3 word chunks. If TodaysMeet worked closer to the definition of what a backchannel was (a real time electronic discussion), this would have been more successful. I wanted it to be a time filler during down time, but everyone's down time seemed to overlap, and the story wasn't updated in real time. The end result was a little incoherent.

The kids loved it anyway. And it created several teachable moments such as, "You're a better writer than making just poop and fart additions to the story." A piece of advice that I should have been proactive with instead of reactive.
Rating: 4 out of 5 toilets

Book Clubs
At the time, I was running three book clubs focused on the mystery genre: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief by Wendelin Van Draanen, and Clues In The Woods by Peggy Parish. Therefore for each book club discussion, I set up a different room. Here's a sample from the Sammy Keyes book club:

It's hard to write about what you are thinking! Especially if you can't type fast. Still there was an overwhelming positive response to this and all three book clubs begged to do it again even if we didn't have a vow of silence. It was a great exercise in learning how to quickly and concisely communicate complex ideas through writing.
Rating: 5 out of 5 clubs

Three 4th Grade Blogging Exemplars from the 2012-13 School Year

I've been running this blog for two years now and I've really enjoyed writing for the many spambots that frequent my blog each day. Without you, it would only be me and possibly my one follower visiting.

You complete me.

But I marvel at the diversity of topics and quality of writing that my 4th graders blog about. I don't spend a lot of time creating structure for individual blogs in my class. I only really do three things:

1) I show them examples
The examples I showed last year included NeverSeconds, a great review site of student lunches and the evolution of a clever idea turned world wide phenomenon.
And also the edublog award nominees.

2) I remind them of their passions, and then let them write about whatever they want

3) I give time for them to share their writing with each other.

For this post I'd like to feature some of the different topics highlighted by individual posts that were created this year with those three simple rules. I'm only including three exemplars because having any more would stretch this post out too much. But other ideas and themes that were written about this year were: Travel stories and place reviews, Nepal highlights (the author felt there was too much negative publicity about Nepal and he wanted to show the good stuff), airplane simulator screen casts and plane reviews, book review podcasts, and video game reviews.

1) Poetry. A lot of kids chose to write poetry on their blog. I love that. I teach poetry as a year-long unit focusing on free verse, and it's so exciting to watch the kids evolve with their poetry in particular and their writing in general. I chose the post below because not only is it a heart breaking poem, but the author takes it a step further and declares her plans to turn the event into a Scratch project.*

My Poem, on Scratch
I made a poem called death. It goes like this:

ring!
I hear the doorbell.
The vet has come.
Sylvie lies on my bed, asleep.
as the vet comes in, I see determination in Sylvie's eyes, a fire, blazing with strength, but it is smouldered by agony.
I understand her pain.
She was taken from her mother when she was so young, and was put in a pet shelter. Nobody wanted her, and she was facing euthanasia, death, cruelty, injections; they were all looking at her hungrily, like a starving fox. She looked back at those evils, her small body rigid, her eyes cold.
but now, there is no escaping it.
her burning flame flickered out. A life lost.
As the vet left, emotionless and smug,I stared at his back. Anger burned inside me, a blazing fire, eating everything in it's path.
Except my grief.
If only there was another way. 
But that small body, the heartbeat of our house, now she is dead. We have lost everything that is valuable to us.
everything.

soon, this poem will be in the form of a scratch project.


2) Reviews There were all kinds of reviews in class this year. I'm featuring this fashion review because I liked that the author not only featured clothes she wore, but clothes from our host country (This photo in this post was modeled by the author's housekeeper). I also like that she had a rating system and different categories.

Today i'm going to share with you a black sari a typical nepali dress usually worn for special occasion's.
A sari is made out of a cloth wrapped around and wearing a small shirt under and if you have a black sari you would have a black shirt.I would recommend this outfit with red lip stick and a small hand bag.

Style Review:

being comfortable:5|10

Style:10|10

Style O' Meter10|10

if you go to nepal you can buy saris in street shops. For shoes i would put in high heals.

3) Stories as Metaphors. We work on metaphors all year long, so it's exciting when an entire story is a metaphor. 

The Fake Battle

This post is about a disease I have. It's permanent. It's called Celiac disease. You can't have wheat or gluten. Gluten is the binder in wheat. It's what makes noodles noodles. Wheat is what grows in fields, those long stalks.  If I do have wheat/ gluten I'll get diarrhea, headaches, stomach pains, foot pains, and I sometimes throw up. It stinks. I can't have a lot of things.

This is about a fake battle between wheat and non-wheat food. It takes place in my stomach and what it does metaphorically.

They are prepared. Ready to fight. The fruitarians, dairyans, ice-creamease,meatanese and all of the villagers of Noglu city were ready for the attack. King Steakleg & Queen Cream of Noglu were sending troops to the border of the city. The city held a special top secret object called the Celia of Destiny. That was what the wheatarians wanted from them. If they steal the Celia the food world will fall and it wouldn't be a pretty sight. In the distance a thundering sound shook the walls of Noglu city. It was the deadly sandwich bomb! BOOM! The war began! It shattered glass of the buildings. A roaring stampede approached the city. The soldiers of Noglu charged at them riding there killer fish horses. Sharp bread-stick spears flew through the air. Celery swords clanged against each other. Wheatarians were winning every second, they killed so many. The general of the army of Noglu had no idea how they would do to win this war. King Steakleg and Queen Cream decided on something they never tried before and to only use only in extreme cases.The only thing they knew what to do was unleash the food they called bad boy. 

Bad Boy is the deadly gluten-free pizza. He can eat anything whatever is in his path.  The Wheatairians were absolutely terrified of bad boy even though they still were winning. Ketchup cannons fired with all their might as cupcakians threw their mighty carrot spears. Bad Boy was on the move and ready for any kind of weapons thrown at him. Smashing cookies leaving them just for crumbs. Grabbing bread soldiers and holding them in a tight grip while squeezing all the moisture out of the bread's bodys. A vicious wheat eater was the most best thing for the Noglutarians and they were winning every minute of the war. The Wheatarians were insanely jealous of the ginormous monster that the Noglutarians had summoned to destroy all the soldiers of Wheatania. One way or another they were going to get their chance of revenge. The wheatarians decided to unleash their monster. Bad Girl. A much more advanced piece of food than Bad Boy. Bad Girl was going to steal the Celia of Destiny.

(This story actually continues and is spanned over several blog posts)