The Squirrel

I had an opportunity to experiment with stop-motion animation using the app Stop Motion Studio for ios. This would be a great opportunity for students to use a storyboard to develop an idea for their own movie and would give them a creative outlet to present their writing.

Using Microsoft Sway to create a WebQuest

For my social studies methods class, I had to create a WebQuest using a format other than the one provided on the QuestGarden website. I decided to try using Microsoft Sway, which is an alternative presentation format to PowerPoint. It is much more dynamic to look at which I think will be appealing to students. I watched a YouTube video tutorial before getting started (I'm a visual learner!)

It was fairly easy to use, although the disconcerting thing is that there is no "save" button as it saves automatically to the cloud.

You can see my WebQuest developed for a fifth-grade study of westward expansion here:

 Wagons Ho!

Feel free to use the WebQuest with appropriate author attribution.

Fabulous Wordless Picture Books

I have been "reading" wordless pictures books recently as I knew I wanted to teach a lesson using one during a clinical assignment. There are so many quality books to choose from (which I will list in a moment) but the one I chose to use was You Can't Take a Balloon into The Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Glasser.

The book was reminiscent of the Eloise series of books by Kay Thompson. The illustrations were detailed and flowed well so that the story was easy to follow. An added layer of complexity was that whichever piece of art or sculpture the girl in the story was looking at was mirrored by what the balloon was doing. My second-grade class was able to pick up on this quite quickly.

For independent practice following the read aloud, I asked the students to illustrate their own wordless story being sure to remember to have a strong beginning, middle and end. I was impressed with what they were able to do. 

Some fabulous wordless picture books:

Journey and Quest by Aaron Becker

Bluebird by Bob Staake

Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson

Chalk by Bill Thompson

Of course, there are many many more wonderful examples out there, but these are some of my personal favorites.

One More Thing...

So I know my last post said that I was wrapping things up with this blog assignment, but as many of you know, there is always one more thing you think of or want to change. In this case, I was finding it annoying that whenever I clicked one of my links I navigated away from my Blogger page and had to hit the back button to return. This is fine if all you do is navigate away to one page, but if there are links to click on that page, and more on the next, well, you've pretty much entered a digital labyrinth! After a little research, I found a great article on how to make sure all the links on your blog open in a new tab (happy dance!)
I'm not a coder, but this was pretty easy to do. Here's the link if you wish to make your blog more navigable.

Wrapping Things Up

It's almost the end of the semester and time to finish adding all the pieces of my blog. It has been an interesting spring and I've had the opportunity to learn about and play with so many new technologies that I didn't know existed. I hope to continue with the blogging experience, whether it looks like this one or not. I've found it to be a helpful tool for gathering ideas and technologies into one place, and have since found other teacher blogs which are helpful. I think that in this digital age, the more we can help one another, the better.

April is Poem in Your Pocket Month

The Academy of American Poets is holding its annual Poem in Your Pocket day on April 30th. The basic premise is that you print out and carry around a favorite poem and share it with others. You can also Tweet your selection on the 30th by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Here is my selection:

Storm Ending by Jean Toomer

Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . .
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.

Click on the link below to find your own poem for your pocket.

Printable Pocket Poems

Survey Monkey

 So I got to play around with Survey Monkey today which was fun. It was a pretty easy way to quickly generate a simple quiz which could be used in the classroom. Test yourself and have fun!

Create your own user feedback survey