Gliffy - Mind Mapping

Assignment Title:  Mind Mapping using Gliffy

Uses in the classroom: 
Lower Elementary:  Students will select an animal and as a partnership, produce a Gliffy or Kidspiration graphic organizer about their animal.  Students will provide facts about the animal and they will include images of the animal.
Upper Elementary:  Students will select a person that made an impact on American culture.  They will provide facts and images and create a Gliffy.  This flow chart or graphic organizer will illustrate the person of choice.  Students will need to provide personal and professional contributions to the American society.

Issues to consider:  Students will need to be given time before this assignment to research the information needed to complete the Gliffy.
Once all the information is gathered students will need to be given a tutorial on how to use Gliffy or Kidspiration.
There will need to be enough computers available for each student or each pair of students depending on the assignment procedure the teacher uses.

Copyright:  Each image was selected from creative commons images.  Under each image is a hyperlink that will take you to the sight it was copied from.
All information for the facts came from:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln and http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies/marylinclon

Gliffy Project - Abraham Lincoln

Photo Editing

Photo Editing

Uses in the Classroom: Students will participate in a tutorial of photoshop.  They will select a character photo for their character study.  Students will crop the photo so that it only has their particular character in the picture.   This assignment would be very useful for many ages of students.  In first grade we could crop a photo.  For example, each student just did a character study on their favorite character.  They had to find a picture of the character online and print it out to put on a character can.  Some of the students character could have used a photo crop to get something out of the picture that they did not want. 

Issues to Consider:  This will be a difficult assignment for an entire first grade class to do as whole group.  Therefore I would suggest doing this as a volunteer project so the students can sit one on one with the volunteer and have assisstance with photoshop.  Another suggestion would be to have computer buddies with a high level class like fifth graders.  They could assist the first graders in photo cropping.

The computer lab would need to be equipped with a photo editing program.

Copyright: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cnam/     Photo Name:  38 Interclubs-Dia 3 125

Some rights reserved by Club Nautic d'Arenys de Mar

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cnam/8475166865/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 

Original Photo

 

 Cropped Photo with brightness changed.

Infographic

Infographic

Uses in the Classroom:  Parents and administrators will review and understand student reading DRA 2 growth goals.  I made a visual poster chart for the reading DRA 2 scores in my classroom.  This is a good visual for parents to see how students are progressing in my classroom.  It is mandatory by our school district that we send home reading scores on each student.  This could be a great addition to attach to the students individual score sheet.  It is a visual for parents to see the entire class performance in reading.  It is also a good explanation of the standards that are required of each student.  I have explained the benchmarks for each trimester.  I have also explained how we reach our lower readers to get them up to their goal in reading.

Issues to Consider:  I chose this assignment as a task for the teacher to get out information about students in the classroom.  This particular program would be difficult for first grade students to handle.  Teacher needs to have specific data to input into charts before making the infographic.

Copyright: I used Piktochart to create the infographic.  www.piktochart.com
Information for the charts were gathered from statistics in my classroom.

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/79c83df9-fc9a-438a-8d4b-45b5d6babda0

Instructional Video

Instructional Video - First Grade Composing and Decomposing Numbers

Uses in the classroom:  Students will view the instructional video to gain a deeper understanding of composing and decomposing numbers.  After viewing the online instructional video of composing and decomposing numbers students will understand that compose means to add two groups of numbers together and decompose means to break down a number.  Students will produce and explain a correct number sentence for both concepts.

Issues to Consider:  This video would be a great introduction for students to this concept.  It would be a good to play this video on a daily basis until they get  a better understanding of the concept.  Compose and decompose is a hard concept for first graders to grasp.
The classroom will need to have a computer with a projector to show the class.

Copyright:
Lesson created by Tami Curry.  A Smartpen was used to create the lesson and was posted to a pencast through LiveScribe.com

Instructional Video for Composing and Decomposing a number

Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling

Uses in the Classroom:  Students will utilize computer software to create a digital story with the inclusion of pictures and voice narration.  Students will include onomonopia's to enhance their writing.  Students must also include a beginning, problem, events and solution in their story.

Issues to consider:  This project will be specified for students in upper elementary and above.  Students will need their own computer work station.  Students will need a camera to take pictures or save pictures that they have taken from home. 

Copyright:  All original pictures taken by Tami Curry.  Story written by Tami Curry.  Music: "Winter Glow" by Zep Hurme, 2012 - Licensed under Creative Commons

Digital Storytelling video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx5cnW5ZgrA

Screencasting

Screencasting

 Uses in the classroom:  This project is intended for students to learn how to use their Raz-Kids account.  Raz-Kids is an interactive reading website that my class has a subscription to.  Students are able  to work on this site at school as well as at home.
Students will view the instructional video.  Students will understand how to use their Raz-Kids account correctly.

Issues to consider:  Students will need their own computer workstation for this lesson.  Students will need to know their teacher code as well as their pass code (if assigned) ahead of time.  Students will also need headphones.

Copyright:  I used Raz-Kids.com to complete this activity.  A subscription to this sight has been purchased for my classroom.  I also used Screen O Matic to create the screencast.


How to use your Raz-Kids account

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cIVYnoVQkS

Talking Photograph

Talking Photograph

Assignment:  Talking Photograph

Uses in the Classroom:  Students will write a small moment story during writing workshop.  Students will take a picture or select a picture to describe their small moment.  Fotobabble will be used to publish their small moment stories.  With assistance from an adult students will download a picture of their choice, record their small moment story and present the story to the class.

Issues to consider:  To use Fotobabble students must have access to a computer with a microphone.  Students will need to practice reading their story offline because the time for recording the story is limited.

Copyright:  Story is original.  Photograph is original.

 tcurry's fotobabble