The first graders in Mrs. Major & Mrs. Water’s classes at Springfield Park participated in research stations to learn about Famous Americans. The stations included:
Promethean Flip Charts: Student worked as a team to go through flip charts that provided them with information on each of their famous Americans. The flip charts had voice overs so students could click on the voice icon to have it read aloud if they were having difficulty reading the text.
Pebble Go: The students navigated the Pebble Go site to locate information on each of the Famous Americans. This site is wonderful because it is very easy to navigate, reads aloud while tracking for new readers, and it has a time line and video for each biography.
Juxio on the iPads: Students selected a non-fiction biography on one of the famous Americans, read the book, and then created a Jux on Juxio for that person. There are different Jux styles, but many students chose a Jux that has space for a photo, title, and description of their person. It turns out looking like a bookmark with a picture and fact about their person.
Keynote: Students filled in the blanks on a Famous Americans Keynote (created by Frank Fitzpatrick), which had a picture and description of each Famous American. When students play back the Keynote, it has patriotic music and the words that they filled in the blank will appear.
WebHunt: The students visited a Famous Americans website created by the talented David Clough. On this site they found information on the Famous Americans. They typed the information they found on their Pages Document and even added a picture from the website to their document.
Stay tuned for a follow up Children’s Engineering project in which the students will create a birthday present for a Famous American of their choice. It has to be an object that they think this person would need and they will have to explain their reasoning.
