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.
Tag Archives: Pages
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 |
2nd Grade Halloween Pages Activity
Mrs. Ratchford’s class at Springfield Park learned how to create a great Pages document. First, the students visited http://www.starfall.com/n/holiday/halloween/play.htm?f. On this site, the students can select a pumpkin from the virtual pumpkin patch. Then they can select shapes for the eyes, nose, and mouth on the pumpkin. When the pumpkin is completed, it will dance in the pumpkin patch. THe 2nd grade students took a screen shot of their completed pumpkin by holding down Control + Apple + Shift+ 4. This gave them a selecting tool that allowed them to select the picture of their pumpkin and copy it. Next we opened up a blank Pages document, and held down Apple + V to paste the picture of the pumpkin at the top of the page. Then we added a text box to the document, so that the students could do some creative writing about fall, halloween, pumpkins, etc. I was pleased to see a variety of different stories and some excellent typing skills.
The students did a great job with this activity because the topic was broad and they had the option to choose what they wanted to write about, as long as they could tie it in with the pumpkin picture at the top of their page. I saw a lot of very creative stories on many different topics. We let the students type without worrying too much about editing. Now Mrs. Ratchford has a writing sample for each of her students that she can pull up during a writing conference and digitally work on editing with her students.