Third Grade Presentation Skills

Last year I created some new lessons for third grade. I want to practice research skills earlier in the K-8 computer curriculum. I used birds and penguins as the starting point. This year, I'm going to continue to develop the bird project. A big thanks again to Amber Coggin at the Winter Wonderland wiki for the glyph!

2009-2010 Pre-Work
This year, I started the project with a short word processing exercise. I started a document titled Birds and saved it in each student directory on the file server. This ensures the location of the document when students go to retrieve it in the future.

We reviewed basic word processing rules: one space between words, no space typed before the period or comma, one space after the period or comma, and press return only at the end of the paragraph.

The students were to type five facts they know about birds in a paragraph. Initially, I wanted to review their word processing skills.

Use of the Penguin Glyph
Today, we used the same penguin glyph that I used with last year's third grade. I was dissatisfied with simply having the third grade students create the glyph last year. It was the first time I had used PowerPoint below fourth grade, though, so I used the penguin glyph and moved on.

This year, I have more of a plan in place. Today, I introduced the concept of copying and pasting words. It follows a Kid Pix lesson from earlier in the year in which we copy and paste a portion of an image using Kid Pix. I demonstrated opening the Bird document in Word. I highlighted the five sentences and chose Edit - Copy. I demonstrated closing Word and opening the penguin glyph. Next I pointed out the penguin slide and the notes section below the slide. I used Edit - Paste to paste the five sentences copied from the document into the notes section.

We used the glyph legend to tell about our knowledge of reading penguin books and seeing live penguins, our preference for seafood and weather, and the gender of the person creating the glyph.

Finally, I asked the students to tell a little about their glyph choices in the notes section. If they read a penguin book or saw a live penguin, they were to tell more about it. Otherwise, they were to write that they hadn't seen a live penguin or hadn't read a book about penguins. They wrote about the type of seafood they enjoy or that they did not enjoy seafood. The wrote about their gender and weather preference.

I explained to the students that next week they would come up to the front of the class and read their notes from a printout while showing us their slide.

Follow Up in the Coming Weeks
I will again have the students use the Activotes to tell what they know about our state bird and compare the state bird with the penguin. We will add the drawing of the Eastern Goldfinch from Kid Pix to a PowerPoint slide and type facts in the notes section. We will again use Kidspiration to compare the state bird and penguin, but this year we will include the chart in PowerPoint and add notes.

By the end of this project, they will have created their own images, completed some research, and created and presented using PowerPoint.

Claire's Penguin Notes (From the Image Above)
I know that birds can be small. Birds have wings and can fly. They can have colorful wings and can be beautiful. Some of them eat worms. Birds can be cute.My penguin has a round head because I read a book about penguins in first grade. My penguin has a blue eye because I have seen a live penguin. My penguin has a yellow beak because I like cold weather. My has a body has a heart on its body because I like to eat crab My penguin has yellow feet because I am a girl.

I'm looking forward to developing this idea even further.