3rd and 4th Graders Use Narrable to Make an Online Story of Forensic Pieces

The theme for Forensics this year was Change.  With only that theme and their teachers, Mr. Hallagen, Mrs. LaRoque and Ms. Thoni as their guide, the students wrote their own pieces.  After lots of work revising and practicing reading their pieces aloud, the students read them at Forensics in front of a judge.  After all of that work the teachers and I wanted the students to do something special with their writing.  We decided to try a new online tool. Narrable.  Narrable allows students to use pictures and their voice to tell a story.

                                

I showed the students a variety of sites to find copyright free images.  They searched for images that would help tell the story of their piece.  They inserted those pictures into Narrable and then recorded themselves reading their piece.  Below are a couple of examples of the Narrables they created.  Enjoy!

Character Trading Cards

Second graders were participating in the Series Reading Club during reader's workshop.  During this book club they were reading lots of books in a series and really getting to know the characters.  The students were then able to understand, predict and critique their books.  Second grade teachers Mrs. Woyahn and Mrs. Siewert wanted their students to show all their great learning about characters.  The two classrooms share eight iPads so we thought we'd use the iPad app Trading Cards by Read Write Think.  The app really gets them thinking deeply about their character and allows them to make connections to their own lives.

  I took small groups of students during their reader's workshop to work on their trading cards.  Our students all have Google accounts so it makes sharing digital products done on iPads very easy.  The students emailed their trading card to themselves and then uploaded the jpeg file to their Google Drive.  I had the students share their images with me and I put them together into a Google presentation.  Mrs. Woyhan and Mrs. Siewert were then able to embed that presentation onto their Google teacher site for everyone to see.


Take a look at their hard work!


Mrs. Siewert's Class

Mrs. Woyahn's Class

Celebrating World Read Aloud Day

Imagine a world where everyone can read...  

We celebrated World Read Aloud Day at Magee last week. World Read Aloud Day is a day to show everyone that all kids have a right to read and write. We should all celebrate that right!

Magee staff each chose their favorite book to read aloud.  We had some staff members have a hard time with that!  It's hard to pick just one!










Students then traveled to someone different than their classroom teacher.  Students listened to the read aloud and then got to work creating a quilt square for our Magee Story Quilt.

Each student made a square that listed their favorite story.  They then got to decorate the square however they liked.  The quilt squares were collected and we now have the Magee Story Quilt proudly displayed in our front lobby!

Winter Fun with First Grade

If you live in Southeastern Wisconsin you are well aware that we have had a long, tough winter.  The first graders and I decided to embrace it and celebrate winter in Wisconsin!  We have been doing all sorts of activities about snow and winter for the past few weeks.  One of my favorite books about winter is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation has a fabulous website.  On the site is an animated version of the story and lots of games.  The first graders really enjoyed the story and playing the games.

There is another great site I discovered, Snow Days.  With a few clicks of the mouse, students are able to create a snowflake and then share it for everyone to see.  The first graders were so excited to see the snowflake they created floating down the screen and then see all of their classmate's snowflakes as well!

Most recently we read two more great books for this time of year, Snowmen at Night and Snowmen all Year by Caralyn Buehner.



In the fall the first graders made an online book based on the story, For Just One Day.  While planning with first grade teachers Mrs. Trost and Mrs. Coss, we decided we would like the first graders to do another book together.  This time we would challenge them to write a longer story.  Each student wrote a story called Snowmen at School.  They used their Google account, Kerpoof for the illustrations and I used FlipSnack Edu to put them all together into an online book.  Click below to read their stories!

Mrs. Trost's Class

Mrs. Coss' Class

Now that we are done with our winter activities, Spring can come anytime now!