This year I have had the opportunity to work with 3rd grade students at Montrose and Glen Lea as part of the extended day program. We work on STEM related activities on Thursday afternoons. For the first 2 meetings, students were working on Scratch to create an animation in which three animals went to hibernate. They learned blockly-style coding in order to write the script for the animals.

Take a look at this great finished sample. To try this with your class, click here for the template and directions.

Over the summer, Greenwood Elementary was awarded a grant for Tower Gardens. Tower Gardens are vertical, aeroponic growing systems. This is the same technology that NASA uses! The towers allow for up to 20 fruits, vegetables, herbs, or flowers to be grown at once without the need for soil. Greenwood currently has 7 towers in various locations throughout the school and they are working to get 13 more throughout the course of the school year. Different grade levels are responsible for maintaining different towers and the results are delicious! Check out the lettuces that are taking off on this Tower Garden! Click here to learn more about Tower Gardens.

As an extension of the Fall Book Debate that is happening in Mrs. Wilson’s class, students worked to design a book jacket for the book that they are supporting. To create the book jackets, we used this Book Cover Creator Website from Read Write Think. We selected the option to make the full book jacket. Students used the templates in conjunction with the drawing and text tools to create a cover for their book.

When they finished, they saved their book cover as a PDF to the desktop and then uploaded it to their teacher through Google Classroom. Check out some of their finished covers!

The students in McGovern and Bailey’s classes reviewed the 3 rock types using Nearpod. Their favorite parts of the lesson were the 360 tours. They were able to see a 360 view from the top of an active volcano and see the lava and igneous rock all over the volcano.

On another tour they were able to visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona and see these giant sedimentary rocks.

At the end of each rock type, students completed a fill in the blank section to check for understanding.

To see the full Nearpod click this link. To add the Nearpod to your library, click here.

The students in Mrs. Wrighter’s 2nd grade class have been learning about graphing in math. They worked through a Nearpod created by one of my 2nd grade teachers at Longan Elementary. In this Nearpod lesson, students collected data by voting on their favorite color, book character, and subject in school. We then used that data to create bar graphs, pictographs, and line plots. They even had a quick graphing “quiz” at the end of the lesson. They loved the interactivity of Nearpod and thought it was so cool that they could send their answers directly to me and I could share work samples back with them. It also gives the teacher a PDF report with all of the student’s answers throughout the lesson. Click here to view the lesson, or click here to add the lesson to your Nearpod library.

The students in Mrs. Baum’s 5th Grade class have been learning about important locations in Henrico County as part of their Henrico History unit. When I came into the classroom, students were prepared with an organizer in which they had selected the locations they were going to include on their tour and had researched the location’s importance in order to write a quick summary about it. We used Google Tour Builder to construct tours in which you fly to the location and information pops up on the left side of the screen about the location. Take a look at this completed tour.

HenricoTour from Karen Hues on Vimeo.

The students in Mrs. Green’s 3rd Grade class have been working on patterns in math. For this lesson, they worked through a Google Slide Presentation to demonstrate their understanding of patterns. They practiced with growing and repeating patterns. Students also had to figure out the rule for some patterns in order to complete the sequence. They learned the shortcut keys to copy, paste, and undo as well. Click here to open the presentation and make your own copy.

The student’s in Mrs. Wilson’s 3rd grade class are preparing for a Fall Book Debate in their classroom. As a class, they read 5 different fall books and then each group was assigned a book to support.

Students collaborated on a Google Slideshow to highlight the story elements in their book.


Students also created their own questions for the moderator to use during the debate. So that every student was able to participate, we used a Padlet wall for them to record their questions.

The students in Mrs. Milwit’s Kindergarten class have been working on the words more, fewer, and same in math. To support their study of SOL K.1, I created a Nearpod presentation in which students practiced with counting, 1-1 correspondence, and comparing groups of items. We have 15 iPad minis available for teachers to check out from the library, so I checked out all 3 sets and used the iPads in the classroom so that every student had an iPad to use for the lesson. Nearpod works great on the laptop too, but it’s a little easier for this age group to use their finger to write and draw. I use the free Nearpod app to run the session from my phone. If you are interested in trying this lesson in your classroom, you can take a look at the lesson here, or add it to your Nearpod library from this link. Mrs. Milwit was kind enough to video bits and pieces of my lesson so you can see what Nearpod looks like in action!

More, Less, Equal, The Same from Robin Milwit on Vimeo.

Last week I collaborated with the librarian, Ms. Lingerfelt, and 2nd grade teacher, Ms. Partenheimer, on their weather/storms project. They had finished up library research, but were trying to think of a way to incorporate a fun, technology tool to present their information. I suggested using Tellagami. They loved the idea and we gave it a try today. The students wrote their weather reports and drew the backgrounds for their weather event prior to the lesson. When they came to the library, they used Tellagami on the iPads to take a picture of their drawing for the background image, created their Tellagami character to look most like them, and then recorded their voice to give the weather report.

When they were finished, they used Seesaw to send their finished videos to the librarian. Here is a sampling of their awesome weather reports!