Mrs. Wise’s third grade class adapted a fable of “The Mouse at the Seashore”. They practiced summarizing and using synonyms to put the story in their own words and drew illustrations. You can view their story by clicking below (requires QuickTime).
Mrs. Maggie Sieklicki’s first grade class recently created talking penguins using Blabberize. Each student wrote facts about penguins and recorded their writing. The students enjoyed the activity and learned new facts about penguins. Click to listen to their penguin facts!
Sixth grade students at Mountville Elementary School participated in a web cast hosted by Scholastic.com featuring the authors of the “39 Clues” Series. The authors of the first six books in the ten book series shared information about the series with students. Students also completed timed, challenging puzzles and submitted answers online to the authors. Each puzzle dealt with the characters in the series, historical figures, geography, logic, and math. Students enjoyed the web cast, and many are considering adding a “39 Clues” book to their list of books to read!
The fifth graders at Farmdale Elementary participated in a webcast today with R.L. Stine. During the presentation, the author shared information about how he became an author and came up with ideas for some of his books. He answered questions from the live audience, as well as those sent in by students viewing the webcast remotely. Farmdale students answered questions online that were used by R.L. Stine to compose a ghost story during the webcast. Students will have the opportunity to enter a contest where they will write their own ending to a story started by Mr. Stine about a zombie or choose from another story starter. The winning story will receive signed books, audiobooks and other prizes! Additional information on the contest can be found at http://www.scholastic.com/goosebumps/webcast/
During their unit on the science Space Module, Mrs. Plotner’s third grade class at East Petersburg Elementary compared the sizes of the planets and their distance from the sun. The children made a paper model of a planet representing its relative size to the other planets and researched the planet. Fact sheets were completed by the students and used to write a paragraph on the planet. They then used a digital camera to take the pictures of the student-made planets. Using IPhoto, Garageband, and Keynote, the class prepared a digital storybook on the planets which is now a Quicktime movie so it can be easily shared.
Click here or on the link to the right to check out their movie!
Second graders at Rohrerstown and East Petersburg Elementary Schools learned about photography this past month in the Special Interest program. The students developed a theme for their digital storybook then set out to take their own pictures. The students worked very hard on their photography books using creativity and going step by step through the writing process. They are very proud of our books and hope you enjoy their published versions. Click here or on the RES and EPES Digital Guessing Books link to the right to view them.
As an extension of the textbook reading “The Next Great Dying” by Karin Vergoth & Christopher Lampton, students watched “The Vanishing Frog” with host Jeff Corwin (originally produced for Animal Planet and accessed through Discovery Education Streaming). Students then selected and researched an endangered amphibian.
The goal of the project was to create a public service announcement (PSA) that would persuade others to notice their amphibian, understand its importance in our ecosystem, and take strides to save it. Students searched for pictures through creative commons licensing and also wrote to some photographers to get permission to use their photographs in the podcasts. The students used Garage Band for the production of their PSA.
To view the podcasts click here!
Frau Jannotta’s two German IV classes are finishing their Wikispace Portfolios which documents their time and work with the Give A Gnome A Home Project. The project began at the beginning of the semester with an adoption ceremony. The students adopted their gnomes and have raised them as their own since. The Portfolios document not just the gnome’s growth, but the student’s German and technology abilities as well.
The students used GoogleDocs to write essays and communicate with the teacher. Frau Jannotta used the comment feature as well as other tools to guide the students when they correct their assignments. After they had made corrections to their work, they recorded their voices (saying what they had written) in the Language Lab and uploaded the file to their individual wikispaces. Each student has a page on the Wikispace and then breaks off into separate pages for each essay assignment. Each essay is accompanied by at least a sound file and a picture. Additionally, each Portfolio features a podcast. The podcast was created with Garageband and iPhoto and was then uploaded to Wikispaces. If time, students will add Blabberize, Vokis as well as other approved Web2.0 tools to enhance this experience.
Students have been continuously graded on their essays with specific rubrics (ie grammar, spelling, content of the essay), and the portfolio will be graded on completion of specific items. There will be points for aesthetics and ease of navigation as well, but this will not be mandatory, as many students were unfamiliar with the sites at the beginning of the semester. Additionally, students’ sound files will be graded based on accent as well as presentation. In order to fulfill the four major domains of Foreign Language; speaking, listening, reading and writing, students will also evaluate one another’s sites to help with comprehension.
If you would like to view their wikispace pages, you must have a wikispace account. Additionally, the site is private, so to view the page, please ask to join AND email Lauren_Jannotta@hempfieldsd.org, so she can grant you access.
The fifth grade students in Mrs. Kuster-Sensenig’s have been producing podcasts about people from the American Revolution period. After collecting some facts of their person’s role, they worked with a partner to create interview questions that could be answered by the facts collected. The students recorded their interviews with Garage Band, then took photos of themselves in costumes representative of that time period using Photo Booth. With the help of Mrs. Smith, the students put the audio files and photos together into a podcast using Garage Band. They made an opening slide and one citing their information source with Keynote. The students had fun completing this project, learned a lot of new programs, and are excited to share their podcasts!
Click here to view them!
The Landisville Middle School Nobles’ Team students have been required to complete a geography project as part of the required 7th grade coursework for many years. This year, however, they made the leap into the world of technology, being required to create a travel brochure for the country that they had chosen to research. Students, working with a partner, were required to research the geographical aspects of their chosen country, as well as required images, in the LMS Media Center with Mrs. Topper, create their own unique brochure in the LMS Computer Lab with the help of Mr. Albright, and, finally, after completion, present their completed projects during our annual International Feast Day. As an extra credit part of the project, students could choose to make a food dish from their country to share with each other and with students from the 7th Grade Knights’ Team, who were our guests for the day.
To see their projects, click here.