Today, my new friend, Brenda Cleland and I wrapped up a collaborative project that my ComTech 10 class and her Grade One class did together. The Grade One class (the Clients) have hired the high school class (the Freelancers) to animate their drawings. The students were paired up and assigned a blog post in which they were able to have a conversation in the comment section. The Freelancers asked the Clients how they wanted their drawings to be animated. They were not allowed to change the artwork in any way; it would be like changing a client’s logo! We hope you enjoy the results below. Be sure to read the comments in each blog post to get a feel for how well the two groups communicated without meeting in person.—
The URL: https://sites.google.com/a/epsb.ca/winter-traditions/home
And on that note, Mrs. Teacher List and I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and all the best in the coming year! Rest well and we’ll connect again in January.
– Pete
Edmonton teacher, Leslie Friesen, passed on this interesting article from Scholastic. The author makes a good case for using the different pieces of the popular Lego sets to illustrate fractions in different ways. There are some printables to help students use the manipulatives. I thought it was good advice given to pre-pack the pieces you need in a bag rather than give the set out.—
The URL: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2013/12/using-lego-build-math-concepts ]]>
Here’s a fun little Flash interactive that asks students to view an arrangement of shapes (similar to a tangram) and then they are mixed up. Students then move and rotate the shapes with their mouse to re-assemble the original arrangement.—
The URL: http://www.visualmathlearning.com/Games/shapeology.swf ]]>
Here’s a great activity for younger science students learning about habitat and camouflage. Students are asked to build a caterpillar and to consider different characteristics such as color and spines. Rather than just move through the exercise blindly, students may proceed only once they have entered a response about why they chose that particular feature.—
The URL: http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/explorer/ecosystems/be_an_explorer/map/caterpillar_play.htm ]]>
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The URL: http://bit.ly/OUIVpT ]]>
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The URL: http://bit.ly/1aUSr6a ]]>
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The URL: http://bit.ly/1h4zmS1 ]]>
Reading Bear is a vocabulary building activity that introduces and reinforces main phonics rules. There are 50 presentations for students, all offered at no cost, thanks to an anonymous benefactor of the program. The activities are supported by video clips and interactive slide shows that can be covered at an individual’s pace.—
The URL: http://www.readingbear.org/ ]]>
My pal, Janice Sundar, told me about @ABCyaGames’ “Word Clouds For Kids.” One problem with other tag or word cloud sites is that it is difficult for students to save their work as an image that can be placed in another project. Word Clouds For Kids makes it very easy for students to print or save their results as a jpg. There are some basic controls like a slider to adjust the number of words used and the results can be edited for color, font, layout, etc.—
The URL: http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm ]]>
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The URL: http://www.2learn.ca/2el/ ]]>