Category Archives: Social Studies
Trekker Updates
I had a great summer traveling across the country to California going the northern route and making videos for our 5th graders who are studying the regions of the United States. Last summer I went the southern route with the Virginia Trekkers and those videos are on our website. I haven’t finished editing the videos […] Continue reading
2nd Grade Famous Americans iMovies
iMovie is one of the more complicated programs on the MacBook computers, so I usually save that one for later in the school year. I’ve been working a lot with the second graders at Laburnum Elementary, and they have showed me they were ready to try iMovie. Since they’ve been reviewing the famous Americans (SOL […] Continue reading
4th Grade Civil War Instabloggs
Earlier, on this post, I described a lesson where students created Civil War timelines using TimelineJS. I was teaching that lesson today with a different group of students at Holladay Elementary and wanted a good way for them to save and display their timelines. Instablogg is one of the best sites I have found for […] Continue reading
2nd Grade China & Egypt Websites
Second graders in Ms. Jones’ class at Laburnum Elementary created their own websites about Egypt & China (SOL 2.1) today. We used CheckThis which allows the students to make a quick webpage with pictures and maps. First they picked Egypt or China and wrote the title. Then they had to write a few sentences about […] Continue reading
3rd Grade Mali Comics
Third graders have been studying Mali (SOL 3.2) recently so today we made comics about Mali using a program called Comic Life. I provided them with a blank template and showed them how to add a fancy title. Then I showed them how to twist and stretch the title and change the style of it. […] Continue reading
4th Grade Civil War Timelines
Fourth graders at Chamberlayne Elementary are currently studying the Civil War. There are a lot of people, places, and battles they have to remember, and making a timeline helps keep everything in perspective. My supervisor, Tom Woodward, just told me about a cool webtool, TimelineJS, that can create a timeline from a Google spreadsheet. So […] Continue reading
4th Grade Talking Heads
Fourth graders at Holladay Elementary are reviewing all the famous Americans they have studied this year. Each student chose a person to research and they will present their information in a “Living Wax Museum” later on in the spring. I’ve been showing them different options to use for the technology part of their presentation, and […] Continue reading
1st Grade Community Maps
Today 1st grade students at Chamberlayne Elementary created their own community maps using ScribbleMaps (SOL1.4 & 1.5). Since I knew it would be kind of tricky for 1st graders to find their school on the map, I put a direct link to it in their classroom folder on the computers. With ScribbleMaps, there’s no log […] Continue reading
3rd Grade Explorer Websites
Today 3rd grade students at Chamberlayne Elementary created their own websites about the Explorers (SOL3.3) using CheckThis. I taught a similar lesson last year but this time I wanted them to include a Google map of the location where their explorer landed. I also wanted them to work on creating a more difficult polling question. […] Continue reading
2nd Grade Choose-Your-Own-Ending Stories
A couple of days ago I was searching for a way that students could make an online classification system for living things (SOL5.5). I wanted them to be able to answer questions about a living thing and have their search get narrowed until they were able to classify it. I found a site called Inklewriter […] Continue reading
