Tag: websites

Oct 22 2013 October 22, 2013 December 8, 2013 NoComment by David

4th Grade Choose-Your-Own Adventure Stories

Posted in 4th Grade, Language Arts, Social Studies

inkleFourth grade students in Ms. Tonello’s class at Holladay Elementary created choose-your-own adventure stories today about Jamestown using Inklewriter. They’ve learned about all the problems the Jamestown settlers had (VS.3), but what if the settlers made different choices? How would the outcomes be different? First I showed them a couple of examples to show them how Inklewriter works: What if one of the charters were revoked? Click here to see. What choices did a settler have when his wife became sick from drinking the water? Click here to see. Once the students understood the concept, I told them to think of a Jamestown problem and two possible choices for solving the problem. We wrote our stories in Pages so that we could save them if the website had any glitches (which they inevitably do). Then we just copied and pasted our text into Inklewriter. We also found pictures online to link in our stories. The students’ stories turned out great. You can see them all here. Reading each others’ stories gives students a fun way to review the Jamestown struggles and practice making predictions. If you’d like to try Inklewriter with your class, I’ve created a brief how-to guide that you can download here.


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Oct 17 2013 October 17, 2013 December 8, 2013 NoComment by David

1st Grade U.S. Symbols Research

Posted in 1st Grade, Social Studies

symbolsFirst graders in Ms. Long’s class at Davis Elementary are doing research projects on the U.S. Symbols (SOL1.11). One great place to do research is PebbleGo because they have pages about all the U.S. Symbols, but did you know you can make your own webpage for research like PebbleGo? The advantage to making your own is you can include everything you want and customize it for your class. I wanted the students to be able to see on a map where some of these symbols are located and be able to zoom down and actually view them. So I created a webpage about each symbol using CheckThis. With CheckThis, making a website is as easy as typing a few sentences, uploading some pictures, and adding links to whatever media you want to include. I embedded some Google Maps for the interactive zooming feature (the students were surprised to see that the Statue of Liberty is on an island in the water). With Google Maps you can click the Satellite view and actually see the real place, which the students enjoyed doing. I also added a Soundcloud recording of myself reading the webpage for students who needed help. You can record your own voice right in Soundcloud then link to it in Checkthis. Finally I added a poll so anyone who visits the website can vote on their favorite U.S. symbol. The students were able to complete their research in just an hour, and hopefully everyone, including Ms. Long, learned something new! Here are the links to the individual sites: Bald Eagle, Washington Monument, Statue of Liberty, U.S. Flag. Or you can see where I put all the links on one page for the students here.


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Sep 25 2013 September 25, 2013 December 4, 2013 NoComment by David

5th Grade Henrico Math Websites

Posted in 5th Grade, Math, Social Studies

DivonneFifth grade students in Ms. Allen’s class at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about important places in Henrico County (HC.1). They have also been studying 2-digit multiplication in math. So today we combined the two topics into one lesson. First the students had to pick two famous places in Henrico County and use Google Maps to figure out the distance between them. Next we went to CheckThis and created a website with the embedded map and a word problem that involved multiplying the distance by a specific number. For example, a person might have to travel back and forth between the two places a certain number of times. Then the students created a poll question with various answers that visitors could choose. I posted all of their sites onto one page that you can see here. Students can answer each others’ questions to review multiplication as well as places in Henrico County.


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Sep 24 2013 September 24, 2013 December 4, 2013 NoComment by David

3rd Grade Migration Place Value

Posted in 3rd Grade, Math, Science

Sea Turtle MigrationThird graders at Holladay have been studying animal migration (SOL3.4) and they have also been studying place value. Since animals usually migrate long distances (numbers in the hundreds or thousands), I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to review both concepts at the same time. First the students picked an animal that migrates and did some online research to find out how far it travels. Next we went to CheckThis and created a website about our animal. Students included the number of miles their animal traveled and added a picture of their animal. Then they added a poll question to ask visitors to identify the digit with a certain place value (i.e. “in the hundreds place”). I posted all the student sites to one page so they could visit each others’ sites and answer their questions. You can see them here: Ms. Moon’s class and Ms. Cowart’s class. One way to extend this activity would be to add a GoogleMap showing the path that the animal travels. We only had an hour though, so we didn’t have time to do that, but I was impressed with how much they accomplished in such a short time!


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Aug 01 2013 August 1, 2013 November 22, 2013 NoComment by David

Trekker Updates

Posted in Social Studies, Trekkers

Screen shot 2013-11-22 at 10.45.50 AMI had a great summer traveling across the country to California going the northern route and making videos for our 5th graders who are studying the regions of the United States. Last summer I went the southern route with the Virginia Trekkers and those videos are on our website. I haven’t finished editing the videos from this summer’s trip yet, but there are lots of other updates on the Trekkers site. We filmed 5 videos in southwestern Virginia telling about the Indians (VS.2), the European immigrants (VS.4), and westward migration (VS.6). We filmed a whole podcast about the life of Patrick Henry (VS.5b) from his birthplace in Scotchtown to his famous speech in Richmond and ending with his death and burial at Red Hill. We also filmed at the Maggie Walker house (VS.9d) and Gunston Hall, home of George Mason (VS.6b). Our most recent podcast was done back in May where we visited the Midlothian Mines to talk about coal production at the first coal mine in Virginia (VS.10b). Several teachers have written to us telling us that they have been having trouble playing our videos. I produce them using an old version of Flash, so that could be the problem. Over the summer I uploaded most of our videos to Vimeo, and hopefully they will play better there. Finally, be sure to enter our 2014 video contest this year. Your class will learn a lot making their own video and you could win a dance party, like our 2013 winners.


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May 29 2013 May 29, 2013 August 14, 2013 NoComment by David

Kindergarten Frog Life Cycles

Posted in Kindergarten, Science

Screen shot 2013-08-14 at 12.48.18 AMToday the kindergarteners in Ms. Brown’s class at Holladay Elementary showed that when students are given many opportunities to use the computers, they can do amazing things! Sometimes I can’t even believe it. In just under an hour, they were able to create a digital drawing of the frog life cycle using ArtPad, record their voices explaining the cycle using a site called RecordMP3, and upload their links using a Google Form. You can see their links by clicking here. My job afterwards was to combine their mp3 recordings with their drawings to make a movie. You can see their finished movies here. But you might also want to check out the direct links to their Artpad drawings because Artpad has a cool feature where it shows the painting as it happened. So it’s a great way to create a simple animation.


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May 09 2013 May 9, 2013 May 30, 2013 NoComment by David

4th Grade Plant Prezis

Posted in 4th Grade, Science

AzariahFourth graders at Chamberlayne Elementary have been studying the parts of a flowering plant (SOL 4.4) so today they made interactive diagrams of a flower using Prezi. First they drew a picture of a flower in Pixie. They looked at online photos to get different ideas for the type of flower they wanted to draw. I explained that they needed to include all the parts of a flower (pistil, stamen, anther, sepal, petal, ovary, ovule, stigma, etc) in their picture. Next they exported their Pixie drawings as PNG files with transparent backgrounds. The transparent background makes it look better in Prezi. Then they logged into Prezi and uploaded their pictures. I showed them how to use the selection tools to zoom into a part of the flower. They added text to label each part and to write a description. When they were finished, they viewed their presentations to make sure they worked correctly. When you click the arrows underneath a Prezi, it zooms into the different spots. It’s a very effective way to present information. Their projects turned out great, and you can see them all by clicking here.


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May 02 2013 May 2, 2013 May 30, 2013 NoComment by David

4th Grade Civil War Instabloggs

Posted in 4th Grade, Social Studies

timelinesampleEarlier, on this post, I described a lesson where students created Civil War timelines using TimelineJS. I was teaching that lesson today with a different group of students at Holladay Elementary and wanted a good way for them to save and display their timelines. Instablogg is one of the best sites I have found for students to easily publish projects that have an embed code. I like it because there is no sign in required, it allows comments, and it gives students a link where they can go back and continue editing. To add embed code, you just click on the “Code” button. We did find that we couldn’t use the exact embed code that TimelineJS gave us, so I showed them how to go into the code and adjust the size to this: height=”650″ width=”600″ and that seemed to work well. You can see all the students’ Instabloggs by clicking here (but remember that the timelines will all be the same since they use data from the same spreadsheet).


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Apr 30 2013 April 30, 2013 May 28, 2013 NoComment by David

Kindergarten & 1st Grade Flower Animations

Posted in 1st Grade, Science

amberKindergarteners and 1st graders at Holladay have been learning all about plants and flowers and how they grow in the spring (SOL K.9 & 1.4). So today I tried two different ways to create animations with them. In Kindergarten we used a site called ArtPad. It records the painting process from start to end, so students painted their flowers in the order they grow: first the seeds, then the roots, stem, leaves, and flower. We also labeled the parts. When you click on the students’ pictures, you can see the animation and it looks like the flower is growing! You can also speed it up or slow it down. Check them out by clicking here. In first grade we used a site called ABCYa! Animate. It was a bit more complicated because it was a frame-by-frame animation. The nice thing about this website though is that you can duplicate frames (pictures) so the students don’t need to draw them over each time. First we drew the background with the things plants need (soil, sky, sun), then on each picture we added the different steps: a seed falling into the soil, roots growing out of it, then a stem, leaves, and finally the flower. We also labeled the parts. You can see all their animations by clicking here.


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Apr 24 2013 April 24, 2013 May 24, 2013 NoComment by David

2nd Grade China & Egypt Websites

Posted in 2nd Grade, Social Studies

egyptSecond graders in Ms. Jones’ class at Laburnum Elementary created their own websites about Egypt & China (SOL 2.1) today. We used CheckThis which allows the students to make a quick webpage with pictures and maps. First they picked Egypt or China and wrote the title. Then they had to write a few sentences about the ancient civilization, including information about its location, landmarks, and contributions. Next they did a Google search for an image that would represent their civilization. I gave them a word bank to use, or they could choose their own search terms. Once they found a picture, they just added the link to it in their CheckThis website. I also wanted them to include a map, so we went to Google Maps, searched for the country, copied the link, and pasted it into CheckThis. If we had more time, the students could have added a poll or a question to their site. I copied all their links and posted them to a Google Doc for easy access. You can see a couple of student samples here: China, Egypt, or see them all by clicking here.


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