Non-Fiction Text Features with Makey Makeys

I had a blast today at Longan finishing up a project that was thought up by Blair Hart (librarian) and Debbie Beam (5th grade teacher) back in August at our “Dining in with Tech Takeout” conference. These fantastic educators visited our Makey Makey Arcade at the conference and loved what this resource had to offer. Debbie, Blair, and I collaborated to plan out this project. First, students researched and practiced with non-fiction text features. Using old magazines, students searched for examples of these features and created a poster with their partner to demonstrate a variety of different non-fiction text features. They wrote scripts to explain each of the features on their poster. Today they set up Scratch accounts and programmed their Sprite to respond with information about the text features when different areas of the poster were touched. They had a great time experimenting with a variety of conductors, such as orange peels, aluminum foil, and Play-Doh, to complete the circuit with the Makey Makeys. Once their projects were completed, they shared them with the class and their teacher by posting their Scratch link in Google Classroom. Special thanks to Gina Browne and Sarah Green for their support during this lesson as well! The kids did a great job!