Coding the Ocean Floor

Posted on January 23, 2018 by kahues

The students in Mr. Taylor’s 5th grade class learned about the different features of the ocean floor. To demonstrate their understanding of these vocabulary terms, the students used Scratch to code the ocean floor. They began by downloading a picture of the ocean floor from Britannica Image Quest and uploading it to Scratch as a backdrop. Then students selected a sprite, in this case the diver, to act as a tour guide. The students then used glide and say blocks to move to the different areas of the ocean floor and explain each feature.




Check out this completed work sample:


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Greatest Common Factor

Posted on January 22, 2018 by kahues

Mrs. Bowles’s fourth graders have been learning about GCF. Today they worked on a Google Slideshow to practice with this topic. We shared this slideshow with the students as an assignment in Schoology so that it would automatically make a copy of the presentation for each student. In another tab, students searched “random number” to pull up Google’s random number generator. We set the Min to 2 and the Max to 36. You can adjust these numbers however you would like. Then click generate to reveal the number. Students were asked to generate 2 numbers and add them to their Google Slide.




Then they listed the factors for each of those numbers and selected the GCF. They repeated these steps for the following blank slides and tried to find the GCF for as many pairs of numbers as they could.




Here is the template with student directions and a sample of a completed slide.

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2nd Grade Seasonal Adaptations Comics

Posted on January 22, 2018 by david

Second graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about ways that animals adapt to the changing seasons (camouflage, hibernation, migration, etc.)(SOL2.7a). Today students in Ms. Myers’ class created comics showing an animal of their choice adapting to the fall, winter, and spring. First we discussed different types of animals and what they do in winter. I demonstrated how to do a Google search if they didn’t know what their animal does. For example, I asked Google, “What to ladybugs do in winter?” (ANSWER: They hibernate in groups). Once we had our information, we went to StoryboardThat to make our comics. Since there are three panels in the comic, we made the first one fall, the second one winter, and the third one spring. The students dragged down scenes to represent their animal’s habitat. I showed them how to click the blue “Edit Scene” button to change the weather for the seasons. Next we clicked the Characters tab and went to Animals to find our animal. The Animals have an “Edit Pose” button that could be used to put the animal into different positions and change its colors. Finally we added “Textables,” or speech bubbles, with complete sentences explaining what the animals do to adapt to the different seasons. To save our comics, we took a screenshot using the Snipping Tool, then posted them to Schoology. You can see them all here.

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2nd Grade Seasonal Adaptations Comics

Posted on January 22, 2018 by david

Second graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about ways that animals adapt to the changing seasons (camouflage, hibernation, migration, etc.)(SOL2.7a). Today students in Ms. Myers’ class created comics showing an animal of their choice adapting to the fall, winter, and spring. First we discussed different types of animals and what they do in winter. I demonstrated how to do a Google search if they didn’t know what their animal does. For example, I asked Google, “What to ladybugs do in winter?” (ANSWER: They hibernate in groups). Once we had our information, we went to StoryboardThat to make our comics. Since there are three panels in the comic, we made the first one fall, the second one winter, and the third one spring. The students dragged down scenes to represent their animal’s habitat. I showed them how to click the blue “Edit Scene” button to change the weather for the seasons. Next we clicked the Characters tab and went to Animals to find our animal. The Animals have an “Edit Pose” button that could be used to put the animal into different positions and change its colors. Finally we added “Textables,” or speech bubbles, with complete sentences explaining what the animals do to adapt to the different seasons. To save our comics, we took a screenshot using the Snipping Tool, then posted them to Schoology. You can see them all here.

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4th Grade Space Animations

Posted on January 22, 2018 by david

Fourth graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about the causes of Earth’s seasons (SOL4.8b) and the phases of the moon (SOL4.8c) in Science. A great way to demonstrate understanding of these concepts is to create animations of the movements of the Earth and moon. That’s exactly what students in Ms. Towns’ class did today using ABCYa!Animate. First, we reviewed the four seasons and the eight phases of the moon with their respective vocabularies (revolution, orbit, rotation, axis, waxing, waning, gibbous, etc). We discussed the position of the Earth relative to the sun to cause the different seasons and the position of the moon relative to the Earth to cause the different phases. We also asked some questions to stir their curiosity… What season is it on the other side of the Earth? Do other moons have phases? Do other planets have seasons? Why does the same side of the moon always face the Earth? Does the Earth move clockwise around the sun? Does the moon travel counterclockwise around the Earth? Those last two questions are important for drawing the animations correctly (ANSWER: both move counterclockwise when looking down from above the orbit, but clockwise when looking up from below the orbit). Once we had our facts straight, we drew the first image of our animation. I instructed them to include a drawing of what phase or season is happening at that position. For the subsequent frames we copied the drawing, then moved or redrew the objects. When we finished all the steps, we turned on looping and slowed down the speed. Then we exported our animations and shared them on Schoology. You can see them all here. (UPDATE: I added some animations from Ms. Hirth’s 4th grade class at Holladay Elementary as well).

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4th Grade Space Animations

Posted on January 22, 2018 by david

Fourth graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about the causes of Earth’s seasons (SOL4.8b) and the phases of the moon (SOL4.8c) in Science. A great way to demonstrate understanding of these concepts is to create animations of the movements of the Earth and moon. That’s exactly what students in Ms. Towns’ class did today using ABCYa!Animate. First, we reviewed the four seasons and the eight phases of the moon with their respective vocabularies (revolution, orbit, rotation, axis, waxing, waning, gibbous, etc). We discussed the position of the Earth relative to the sun to cause the different seasons and the position of the moon relative to the Earth to cause the different phases. We also asked some questions to stir their curiosity… What season is it on the other side of the Earth? Do other moons have phases? Do other planets have seasons? Why does the same side of the moon always face the Earth? Does the Earth move clockwise around the sun? Does the moon travel counterclockwise around the Earth? Those last two questions are important for drawing the animations correctly (ANSWER: both move counterclockwise when looking down from above the orbit, but clockwise when looking up from below the orbit). Once we had our facts straight, we drew the first image of our animation. I instructed them to include a drawing of what phase or season is happening at that position. For the subsequent frames we copied the drawing, then moved or redrew the objects. When we finished all the steps, we turned on looping and slowed down the speed. Then we exported our animations and shared them on Schoology. You can see them all here. (UPDATE: I added some animations from Ms. Hirth’s 4th grade class at Holladay Elementary as well).

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3rd Grade Loopy Cycles

Posted on January 16, 2018 by david

Third graders at Holladay Elementary have been learning all about cycles: animal life cycles, plant life cycles, seasons, and the phases of the moon (SOL3.8). Today students in Ms. Ambrose’s class used a website called Loopy to demonstrate how one of these cycles works. First we reviewed the steps in each cycle and pointed out that most of them have four parts. The students could choose which cycle they wanted to illustrate. I explained that a cycle is kind of like a circle because it continues around and around. Then we went to Loopy and I showed them how to create each step of the cycle by drawing circles and labeling them. The students could also change the colors of each circle. Next, we drew arrows to show the order and relationships between each step. We discussed why the order was important. Could the steps happen out of order? The way Loopy works is you click up or down arrows in each circle and see how having more or less of that part influences the other parts (it was designed to study simulations). So it illustrates life cycles best. If there are more eggs there will be more butterflies or frogs, but if the number of eggs goes down, so does the number of adults. You can change the relationships, too, by making the arrows positive or negative. That would be great for illustrating food chains and food webs (if there are more predators, there would be less prey – a negative relationship, but if there are more prey, there would be more predators – a positive relationship). When we were finished, we published our Loopy projects, and it provided a link to shorten with Bit.ly. We shared our links on Schoology, but you can see them all here.

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Kindergarten Martin Luther King, Jr. Animations

Posted on January 16, 2018 by david

Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day so kindergarten students at Holladay Elementary have been learning about his life and his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Today students in Ms. Connolly’s class created animated pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking. First, we went to ABCYa! Animate, and I explained that we would draw two pictures of Dr. King. One would have his mouth in one shape, and the other would have his mouth in a different shape. When we played the pictures together, one after another, it would look like he was talking. In order to draw him accurately, we looked at photos of him. We saw that he had brown skin, black hair, and a mustache. The students tried to draw him on the first frame, then we copied the frame (using the copycat button), deleted his mouth, and redrew it differently. Some students made the mouth open and closed. Others added teeth or a tongue. I showed them how to turn on looping (so it keeps playing), and we exported our animations as .gif files. Finally, we uploaded them to a Padlet so we could see everyone’s. You can play audio from his speech while viewing the animations, and it will look like Dr. King is actually speaking!

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Henrico 21 is coming!!!

Posted on January 12, 2018 by cmaquilina

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Save the Date – May 23, 2018

Posted on January 12, 2018 by jlrobinson3

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