The 3rd grade students have been studying the European Explorers. The teachers were looking for a new, fun way to reinforce these concepts, so I used the “Facebook” template from Virtual Share and updated it to fit the needs of the 3rd grade students. There were 8 slides altogether in this Keynote; 4 for each of the explorers information and another 4 for photos of each explorer. The hyperlinks allow the students to navigate Explorerbook when in play mode. If they click on the explorers friends, it will take them to another explorers information page. If they click on the Photos tab, it will take them to a page with pictures and captions for each explorer. To exit they click on the log out tab and it takes them back to the editing mode in Keynote. What a fun way to review these important people in history!
Category Archives: 3rd
Probability in Pixie
The 3rd grade student’s in Mrs. Knox’s class at Glen Lea really enjoyed representing probability problems by using stickers in Pixie. After showing all of the possible outcomes, the students then filled in a probability sentence and used the words unlikely, likely, impossible, certain, or equally likely to describe the results. This activity could easily be adapted for 4th & 5th grade as well. They could write their own probability situation and create a similar Pixie from scratch for their classmates to solve.
Phases of the Moon
The 3rd Grade student’s in Ms. Knox’s class at Glen Lea amazed themselves, and their teacher, when they created a movie in Pixie to show the phases of the moon. The students added their picture to the astronaut on the title page as well as a title and their name. Next, they filled in each of the 8 slides with the names of the 8 phases of the moon and a picture of that phase. When all slides were created, the students clicked on the “Share” tab. We had each slide last for 3 seconds, added a blend transition so it would move nicely from one phase to the next, and we added “Nightwatch” as our background music. After the settings were complete, the students clicked “Create” and saved the video to their student folder on Volume 2. We were able to accomplished all of this in one class period and the students LOVED their final product!
Untitled from Karen Hues on Vimeo.
Telling Time Pixies
The 3rd Grade students in Ms. McGirt and Ms. Knox’s class enjoyed practicing their time skills using Pixie. In the first part of our lesson, students had to look at the hands on a clock and determine the time. In the next set of slides, students were given the time and had to practice adding the hour and minute hands to a blank clock. Finally, in the last few slides, the students had to read the 2 analog clocks and record the times in the digital clocks. Next, I showed them a strategy for drawing with the paint tool on the clock to jump from one hour to the next and figure out the elapsed time.
VoiceThread
One of my favorite Web 2.0 tools is VoiceThread! I have used it in several classrooms to get the students communicating about the things they are learning in class. The first step is to build avatars for your children so that their actual pictures are not out on the internet. There are several great sites for creating your avatar, such as buildyourwildself.com, or you can have your students draw themselves in Pixie. Then you can use these pictures to add identities on your page. You only have to create the identities once and they will be on your account forever, or until you delete them.
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| From Build Your Wild Self Avatar |
Next, the teacher uploads photos or videos to their VoiceThread project. Once the images are uploaded, you are able to share the link with your students so that they can hop on the computer and make comments. Comments can be typed or spoken. Both commenting options allow you to have a virtual pen, so you can draw on the page while you are talking or typing your comment. You can set their preferences so that all comments have to be approved by the teacher before they are posted. This is a really great way to get your students talking with their peers, other schools, other students in Virginia, students in other states, and students in other countries! The possibilities are endless.
Review Using ActiVotes & QUIA
As the benchmark testing is quickly approaching, many teachers are asking for fun activities they can do with their kids to review. I really like the idea of using the ActiVotes because the students tend to be more engaged and excited about review whenever the ActiVotes are in the room. My students always loved using my Quia website too, so why not put the two together? In this review lesson, I projected the teachers Quia site with a rags to riches activity on 2nd Grade map skills. Rags to Riches is similar to “Who wants to be a millionaire” so they kids get excited that they are earning pretend money as they answer the questions correctly. You can also change the currency. In this activity, they were trying to win a million Skittles rather than dollars.
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| From QUIA Review Game |
All teachers in Henrico have access to a Quia site. Quia is a nice option for review because you can create your own activities with the specific questions that you want your students to know the answers to. You can also borrow activities from others if you find a great Quia activity that you like on other persons page. If you love their activity, but there is a question or two that you dislike, you can always edit the other persons work and make it fit your needs. If you would like help setting one up for your classroom, please sign up for a consultation.
States of Matter Videos and Sort in Pages
Looking for an activity on states of matter? It could be the first introduction for Kindergarten students, or a review for the upper grades, as this SOL is touched on in all grade levels. To create this activity, I went to United Streaming and search for states of matter for grades K-2. You can also search by the SOL number, which is a nice feature. Rather than downloading the entire 25 minute video, I just downloaded the segments that I needed…a video for solids, another for liquids, and one more for gasses. After successfully downloading to my desktop, I opened up a new Pages document simply pulled the video clip into my pages document. I re-sized the videos (just like you would a picture) to make it fit above the 3 columns. To play the video, the students click 2 times. To pause the video, click once. There is a remote control under the quick time tab in the inspector (blue circle with the i) that allows you to navigate through the movie. After watching each video, the students found the pictures of items that belong in that category, and moved them to the correct box. You can make the boxes with the shape tool. Just be sure to push the boxes to the background so that the pictures can be placed on top.
Greece & Rome Pixie Slide Show
The students in Ms. Albus & Mrs. Parrish’s 3rd grade classes at Baker worked on these 5 Pixie slides to enhance their understanding on Greece & Rome. We started off by locating Europe on a world map. Next we identified the countries of Greece & Italy on a map of Europe. Then we took a closer look at Greece & Italy and the location of the Mediterranean Sea, which was important for transportation and trading. In the final slide, we looked at how the contributions from ancient Greece & Rome have shaped our lives today. By clicking on Share, we were able to turn our 5 slides into a slide show. We did not have time, but voice recordings can easily be added to each slide to explain each slide before exporting as a Movie or Slide Show.
Greece & Rome from Karen Hues on Vimeo.
3rd Grade Adaptations & Habitats
The third grade students in Mrs. Hatfield’s class at Glen Lea have been studying animal adaptations and habitats. As a fun culminating activity, her students went to the Build Your Wild Self site to create their wild self. First, the students tried to create a character that looked almost identical to themselves. Next, they could select the different animal parts to turn themselves wild. Finally, the students had to select a habitat that they thought would be appropriate for their wild self based on its characteristics. When they completed their wild self, the website did a fantastic job of explaining the benefits/purpose of each of the animal parts that they selected.
The students then took a screen shot of their wild self and pasted it into a Pages document. From here the students will be able to type a paragraph explaining what kind of animal they are, what habitat they live in, and what body parts allow them to adapt to this habitat.
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| From Wild Self |
3rd Grade Tagxedo
The third grade students in Mrs. Guigou’s room at Springfield Park had a great time turning their writing into a word cloud using a program called Tagxedo. To save time, the students had their writing typed up in Pages and saved in their student folders. We opened up a web page with Tagxedo and also opened up the Pages document with their writing. The students then highlighted all of their typing from the Pages document and copied it using “Command/Apple + C.” On the Tagxedo page, we clicked on load to enter text. In the text box, the students used “Command/Apple + V” to paste their typing and click submit. After their word cloud was created, they were able to select their theme, layout, font, orientation, and shape. Since her student’s had been writing about school, she decided to use the shape of an Apple. The more text you have, the easier it is to see the shape that is being created. In their writing, the word school was used the most often, so it was larger than the rest of the words in the word cloud. This is a great way to have students publish their writing. I’ve also seen this program used when students are using the thesaurus to find synonyms for over-used words, such as fun and good. Check it out when you get a chance– http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html
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| From Tagxedo |