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.