Sensationally Savvy Advice- Digital Story “First-Draft”

I was having trouble deciding what kind of digital story I could possibly do being that it is the end of the school year! But I then remembered how November from our class text explained that we don’t have to see the use of technology as an add-on and that we can incorporate it into anything that we do! So as I began looking over my “typical” end of the year activities it dawned on me that it would be “fun” to incorporate students “voices” into their typical letters of advice to the upcoming second grade students. In connection to the CCSS for second grade students have been working on letter writing throughout the course of the school year. Students have had pen-pals, they write letters to the Celebrity of the Week every Thursday, and have written letters to each other recommending books to read. So, I decided to have students write their typical second grade advice letter but then had them chose a sentence or two to highlight to record.

Early on in the year I introduced my students to a song to teach them the parts of a friendly letter. It has been very effective I even sometimes hear them humming it just for fun. Listen to them sing the song!

After viewing many different digital stories on various blogs I decided I wanted to explore using iMovie for my digital story. My students all drew pictures for what would become the “title page” of our digital story and then students voted on the best one to be inputted into the story. Together students brainstormed ideas of what they could say to introduce the digital story and then students “auditioned” for the part to do the introduction. Students then wrote their letter demonstrating the appropriate friendly letter format. Finally students brainstormed ideas for the closing of the story, students “auditioned”, and one student memorized the closing and ended our story. When viewing the movie I thought it was missing a little “something” so I went back and added in my advice to my upcoming students and some “happy” music! Here it is…

Hope you enjoyed my digital story. I look forward to using this digital story on the first day of school year for my upcoming second grade students (I predict this might even get students excited and curious about other ways we might use technology throughout the year). In addition I will also leave the hand written letters on students desks for the first day. Please let me know what you think.  Provide me with any feedback you might have. Thanks in advance for your time.

P.S-While I found iMovie a little “tricky” to use because of it being difficult to merge still images and videos, I feel like the more I play with the program the easier it may become. I plan to play around with it this summer. My son is always doing something that would be fun to capture. Look for an upcoming iMovie soon!!!

Learning About Plants Animoto

Every year my school hosts V.I.P Day where students are permitted to bring a Very Important Person to school for a portion of the school day. Every year teachers become frazzled, anxious, and overwhelmed by the idea of planning such a day. However, every year students boast about how it is their most favorite school day of the year and every year while teachers are exhausted by the end of the day, they too boast about what an amazing day it was to see families engaged with their students and to meet so many moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, and uncles and friends. The Animoto, which I created for my graduate class, EDUC 584 Integrating Technology and Literacy showcases this very special day. As a culminating activity to our second grade plant unit students and V.I.P’s engaged in science literacy based activities that met unit objectives. Students read a non-fiction selection about Strange Plants and responded to what they read. Families created Seeds on The Go flipbooks to illustrate and describe the many ways seeds travel. Using magnifying glasses students and families had the opportunity to look closely and observe using their 5 senses a variety of seeds: dandelion seeds, avocado seeds, tomato seeds, and many more. Lastly, families had an opportunity to plant their very own flower. Families discussed what flowers need to grow and even gave their flowers a spritz of water before they left.  Take a moment to watch us learn and “GROW”!

          Creating the Animoto was a great experience. I found the program to be very user-friendly. Viewing the Animoto allowed me to reflect on the activities that were presented and to see my students “in action” through a different lens. I look forward to sharing the Animoto with my current students as well as next year’s students as a teaching tool and to get them “psyched” for their very own V.I.P day. In addition, I always create a photo album of the year’s events that is shared at our end of the year celebration. Next year, I will use this new technology tool to create a digital photo album. Furthermore, in thinking about additional ways I can use the Animoto program, specifically for my plant unit I think I will use it to frontload plant vocabulary. For example, through the use of images on Flickr I can download pictures of the different parts of a plant. Students will instantaneously become engaged and motivated to learn new vocabulary.

YouTube For Schools

YouTube is launching a new tool to help teachers and students with their teaching and learning.  Some schools block access to YouTube because the content can be risky.  YouTube has answered the request of teachers across the country with YouTube EDU.  Now schools can have access to the educational benefits of YouTube without the worry of inappropriate content.  

Here are some ways I've been using educational YouTube videos in my classroom:

I used this video when teaching my students two digit addition and subtraction.




I used this video to teach my students how they can use a number line to add and subtract.