Tag: pages

Apr 30 2014 April 30, 2014 June 30, 2014 NoComment by David

1st Grade Spring Acrostic

Posted in 1st Grade, Language Arts, Science

springFirst graders in Ms. Smith’s class at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about poetry in language arts and spring in science, so today they wrote an acrostic poem that spelled out SPRING. They came up with their own words or phrases to go with each letter and typed them on a Pages document. When they were finished, I showed them how to highlight the first letter of each line and change the font, size, and color so it stood out. Next we went online and I showed them how to do a Google image search to find spring pictures that went along with their ideas. They learned how to drag and drop the pictures from the browser onto their document (that took a lot of practice for some of them)! Finally, they saved their acrostic poems, and I combined them together into one document. I exported it as a PDF and uploaded it to another publishing site called Issuu. You can take a look at their finished project by clicking here.


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Apr 23 2014 April 23, 2014 June 29, 2014 NoComment by David

Kindergarten Wishes

Posted in Kindergarten, Language Arts

Screen shot 2014-06-29 at 7.45.16 PMKindergarten students in Ms. Fennell’s class have been working hard all year to get to the point where they are finally ready to write complete sentences. That’s a pretty amazing accomplishment, considering when they started in September they were just learning to identify their ABCs! They had previously written a sentence on paper about their wishes and drawn a picture, so today we were making a digital copy for their portfolios. I was also teaching them some basic word processing skills such as using Shift to make capital letters and using the space bar and punctuation keys. First I gave them a Pages template with the font already set to a large size. They typed their sentences and added their names. Then I showed them how to use Photo Booth to take a picture of their drawings. Ms. Fennell and I helped them drag the photos to their Pages documents. They saved their files, then I combined them together into one document and uploaded them to Flipsnack for publishing. You can take a look at it online here or download the complete PDF here. I love how their wishes are all unique and some are quite moving.


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Oct 23 2013 October 23, 2013 December 8, 2013 NoComment by David

3rd Grade Pirate Maps

Posted in 3rd Grade, Math, Social Studies

piratemapThird grade students in Ms. Ford’s class at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about the continents, oceans, and hemispheres (SOL3.5). So today we practiced finding and burying pirate treasures on various continents and oceans based on their hemispheres (really, using latitude and longitude lines). I gave them a template with a map and some questions that you can download by clicking here. First they had to label the continents and oceans on the map. Next we labeled the hemispheres by breaking them up into 4 quadrants: northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest. Now, using latitude and longitude coordinates we could figure out which quadrant we were in. I gave the students three treasures to find first. They entered the coordinates on iTouchMap and found where the treasures were located. Then they put a big red X on the spot. The next task was a little harder. I gave them coordinates that put the treasure in the ocean, but they had to adjust them to move the treasure to land. After testing a few numbers, the students figured out that the numbers get larger the farther away they are from the Equator or Prime Meridian and were finally able to place the treasure on land. For the last task, students could place the treasure anywhere they wanted, but they had to find the coordinates for the site and write it out as a question for a friend to solve. This activity adds a bit of math and problem solving to the continents, oceans, and hemispheres topic. Let me know if you’d like to try it out with your class!


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Oct 08 2013 October 8, 2013 December 6, 2013 NoComment by David

4th Grade Mystery Animals

Posted in 4th Grade, Language Arts

mysteryToday 4th graders in Ms. Ficor’s class at Holladay Elementary were working on writing better descriptions. We started out in Today’s Meet where I would write a non descriptive sentence like, “I saw a monster,” and then they would have to add their descriptive ideas to help us “picture” the topic better. We talked about using the senses to describe what it looks like, sounds like, acts like, moves like, feels like, and even smells like. We also talked about comparing its size to something else. After a bit of practice (you can see the transcript of our Today’s Meet session by clicking here) it was time to start writing about our mystery animal. One of my goals in this lesson was to teach them how to use the Mac word processing program called Pages. So we opened up a blank Pages document, and I showed them how to add a title as a heading, “Mystery Animal,” and their name as a subheading. Then they started typing a paragraph describing an animal without actually identifying the animal. We wanted to see if they could write a good enough description that their classmates could figure out what the “mystery animal” was. When they were finished, they did a quick Google image search and added a picture of their animal to their Pages document. You can read a student example here.


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Jan 08 2013 January 8, 2013 January 23, 2013 NoComment by David

2nd Grade Winter Writing & Editing

Posted in 2nd Grade, Language Arts

Picture 2Now that we are back from vacation, many classes are writing about the winter. Pages is our Mac word processing program, and I like to make sure that all the students know how to use it. So today I was teaching a 2nd grade class how to write about winter in Pages. The teacher wanted them to include facts about the winter that they have been learning about. So first we reviewed the weather and how plants, animals, and people adapt to the changes. Then we opened Pages and I showed them how to use the Style button to add a title and a subtitle (for their name). Using the Style button is a lot quicker than changing the font and size manually because once you hit Return, it goes back to the regular style. I instructed the students to write as much as they could in the alloted time. Then we did a Google image search to find a winter picture, and they dragged it to their document. We didn’t publish this writing assignment since several students didn’t finish, but there are many options for publishing. You could combine them all into one document, print it as a PDF, and create an online flipbook using sites like Youblisher or Flipsnack. You could also do all the writing online using sites like Instablogg or Google Docs. You could even have students print their stories as individual PDFs and drop them into your DropBox account using sites like DropItToMe. Then you could transfer them to your Public Folder and send the links out that way. I also recently found a cool webtool for editing online writing without messing up the original. Using Markup you can draw and write on any webpage just by clicking on a bookmarklet that you drag to your bookmarks bar. When you are finished, it gives you a new separate link with all your edits. I used it to edit one of today’s writing assignments so you could see an example here.


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Oct 10 2012 October 10, 2012 January 9, 2013 NoComment by David

4th Grade Class eBook

Posted in 4th Grade, Language Arts

Picture 2Today 4th graders in Ms. Charity’s class at Laburnum Elementary created their own class eBook. You can create one fairly easily with your class as well! The cool thing about eBooks is that they can be read by anyone on almost any platform (computers, iPods, iPads, etc), and all you need is a word processing program (such as Word or Pages) and an Internet connection. We used Pages for this project. The students first typed a paragraph about themselves. I showed them how to change the font, size, and color of the title. You usually want to keep the main text in a common font because some devices will not display strange fonts correctly. Then they added a photo of themselves using PhotoBooth and searched the Internet for a picture of something else they had written about in their paragraph (which they highlighted in bold text). In order to publish their writings as an eBook, it must be a PDF document. So I combined them into one Pages document and saved it as a PDF (go to Print > PDF > Save as PDF). Then I uploaded it to FlipSnack which is a webtool for making eBooks or flipbooks. Flipsnack converts it into an online book that can be read anywhere and even embedded on a webpage (as you can see below)


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Sep 12 2012 September 12, 2012 September 13, 2012 NoComment by David

3rd Grade “Guess Who” Game

Posted in 3rd Grade, Language Arts

Today third graders at Laburnum Elementary created their own class “Guess Who” game to learn more about each other. First I gave them a Pages template that you can download by clicking here. It includes some bookmarks and links so that viewers can click and see the answer. Once students opened the template, they added a title using the Styles button. Next they typed four our five sentences about themselves. They could write about their family members, friends, pets, favorite foods, sports, etc. Then they took their picture using Photo Booth and uploaded it to a cool site called PicMonkey. PicMonkey is great because you can add cool effects to photos for free without having to register. We picked the Pixelate filter to make the picture extremely difficult to identify. I helped them take a screenshot of their pixellated photo and add it to the document. Then we added their real photo to the bottom of the document with their names. So when viewers tried to guess who it was based on the written clues and the scrambled picture, they could click on a link to reveal the true identity of the student. You can see how it works with this sample, and if you’d like to see them all, I converted them into an online flipbook that you can view here.


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Mar 22 2011 March 22, 2011 June 21, 2011 NoComment by David

1st Grade Jack & the Beanstalk (continued)

Posted in 1st Grade, Language Arts

First grade students in Ms. Edmond’s class at Holladay Elementary have been reading Jack and the Beanstalk. She had them write a continuation of the story and then sent them to me in small groups to create a picture using Kerpoof and type it up using Pages. I’ve mentioned Kerpoof before on this blog. It’s a great website for students to create stories using clipart and their own drawings. In the sample picture you can see the student drew Jack and used clipart for the giant and his wife. After they created their pictures, we saved them as JPG files. Then the students typed their stories using this template in Pages. I helped them add their picture to the documents, then we saved them as PDFs. The cool thing about saving documents as PDFs is that they can be published online and if your school uses iPods or iPads you can upload them to the iBook app. Take a look at some student samples: Kimber, Ra’Quan.


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Feb 08 2011 February 8, 2011 April 11, 2011 NoComment by David

2nd Grade Fractions Flipbook

Posted in 2nd Grade, Math

Second graders in Ms. Salmon’s class at Holladay Elementary made cool fractions flipbooks today using a website called Youblisher. First partners went around the school looking for real life examples of fractions. Most of them found lots of fractions in the artwork hanging on the walls. They photographed their examples using a digital camera. Then Ms. Salmon loaded the pictures into the students’ folders. I showed them how to edit the photos using Preview (you can trim a picture by dragging a square over the part you want then pushing Apple+K, and you can adjust the color and size by clicking Tools in the menu). After editing their photos they dragged them into a Pages document and typed a few sentences about their fraction. You can download the template (with a background color) by clicking here. I combined them into one document, printed them as a PDF, and uploaded them to the website. Youblisher did the rest! You can see the final product by clicking here.


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Jan 25 2011 January 25, 2011 March 21, 2011 NoComment by David

1st Grade Word Processing

Posted in 1st Grade, Language Arts

It’s a great idea to start word processing instruction as early as possible since students use those skills through all grades. So here’s a sample word processing lesson I taught in first grade. I gave the students a very simple template that you can download by clicking here. It basically just has the font preset for 36 (large for first graders) and has a starting sentence: “This is my picture.” First the students went to Kerpoof, drew a picture, and saved it as a JPEG image (Kerpoof makes it easy). Then they opened the word processing template and dragged their picture into it. Next they wrote sentences describing their pictures. As you can see from these examples (Edwin, Giuliana, Lily, John, Maty, Reyna, Shriya, Yusuf) some students wrote a lot of details while others wrote only a few. But they all got some good experience with word processing and writing.


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