Saying "Thank You" for Images

I am helping my fourth grade students improve their research skills by taking a simple topic and asking them to find seven facts about birds. Of those seven facts, they are to choose the thing they think is most important.

What To Do Next
We had just finished using PowerPoint for the first time to create a math shapes presentation. I decided to have them place the information they gathered in PowerPoint. Part of my goal with all students is to have them focus on telling their story with images and using the notes section for all their text.

Getting Started
The students wrote their seven facts on a sheet of paper and put a star next to the most important fact. On the server, I placed a template for each student in their own folder. Once the research was complete, each student typed the word Birds in the title of slide one. They typed their name, class (4A/ 4B), and February 2009 for the subtitle.

On slide two they typed "The important thing about birds is ..." and they filled in what they thought was most important. On slide three through eight, they added a sentence such as "Birds have feathers" or "Birds have wings".

This took most students a whole 42 minutes of work.

Citations or Saying "Thank You"
In the next class period, I demonstrated how to use Pics4Learning.com to locate bird photos. I explained that any time you create something, you deserve to have someone say "thank you" for using your work.

In school work, this is called a bibliography. I pointed out how Pics4Learning makes this very simple by including the proper way to say thank you at the bottom of the image.

The Hard Part
Surprisingly, the hard part was helping the students resize their images. Pics4Learning images slid onto the PowerPoint slide as very large images. This is great because students often use the little thumb nail size photos. I went around the room and individually showed the students how to change the viewing size of the slide so they could see the whole image and resize so it fit on the slide.

This will take us two if not three full classes. I'm looking forward to seeing the final presentations.

The Fun Surprise for Me
When I was looking at one of my fourth grade student's pages, her citation pointed to Andrea Hernandez in FL. Who would have guessed, I actually knew the photographer. A neat bonus for me!

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Image Citation:
Hernandez, Andrea. p1010121.jpg. summer 2008. Pics4Learning. 22 Feb 2009

"The Important Book" and Research

I was reading Brian Crosby's blog, Learning is Messy, the other day and came across an idea that sparked a project in my computer lab. He was using a book by Margaret Wise Brown called The Important Book. She is a favorite author of mine since my now eighth grader was a few months old. We went through two board book editions of Good Night Moon within a couple of years.

My Research Focus
I was just writing about my intended focus on helping students with their research skills. I am looking for more ways to help students understand how to read to find information. Brian outlined how the book helped him to help his students take some first steps in their process by following the pattern used in The Important Book. You should read his post. I liked the idea so much, I ran out to Barnes and Noble last weekend to purchase a copy.

When I get a new idea, I'll often introduce it to several grades at the same time. In the following years, I try to keep coming back to the same general idea with a different focus. I am going to use The Important Book and the following lesson in the fourth, fifth, and perhaps sixth grade this year.

My Introduction to the Students
I started with the fourth and fifth grade this week. I scanned three pages from the book and placed them in my Activstudio software. My document camera is not working, or I would have used that instead. It could just have easily been imported into PowerPoint.

The first screen was just an image of spoons. I read the description to the class. We talked about the pattern in the wording. It tells the important fact about the spoon, several supporting facts, and repeats the important fact.

I brought the next screen up at 10% of actual size and told the class the next description was about daisies. I asked them to predict what the important fact would be. I changed the screen to show the page at 100% and then read the description. Next, we counted up the number of facts she listed.

I wanted the students to realize that they had equally good ideas about what the important thing was about daisies. I also wanted them to realize that they could have written an entirely different entry with just the ideas they generated as a group.

I finished up by reading one more entry about grass.

Next Steps
I had the fifth grade students focus on amphibians and the fourth grade students focus on birds. There isn't a particular reason that I chose those categories. Generally, I felt I wanted the younger students to have a very easy topic. I want to give them practice with reading a web page for information.

I have baskets with yellow pads and pencils next to the computers this year. I wanted the students to use the pad to list those the facts as they found them. I didn't want them to worry about switching between Word and the Internet. They could have, but I wanted their focus on the facts, not the technology.

I bookmarked a Yahoo Kids page about birds and amphibians. The students access those links from our school delicious account.

I did a quick survey of the room. Most students had not heard of or used Yahoo Kids. I believe every student had used Google. I took a few minutes to explain that Yahoo Kids was written in a way that students in the third through sixth grade could more easily understand. One student said they use Yahoo.com. I asked if they typed www.yahoo.com and they said yes. I told them to just type kids instead of www and they would be able to get to the website at home very easily.

Off to the Computer
They had very little time to work on the computer independently. They quickly got onto Firefox, accessed their class link though delicious, and started finding facts. I explained to them that they just needed to find seven facts. After they found those facts, they should put a star next to the fact that they thought was most important.

Class Two
The next part of the project was to continue today with more research. Unfortunately, the Internet was down all day. With any luck, it will be back on Tuesday.

My plan is to have the fifth grade type the information into Word and find an image to support the words. I want to start showing them how to use Pics4Learning to find images that are free to use for school work. They have an extensive set of amphibian images. Their classroom teacher had asked me to review placing and moving images in Word, so I have a dual purpose.

The fourth grade has just finished their first PowerPoint presentation. In our first lesson, we learn to use the drawing tools to draw a page of rectangles, circles, triangles, a test of all shapes, and a face they make with the shape parts. The lesson is intended to get them over potential stage fright. They enjoy learning how to create drawn objects, change their color, and play with the fill tool.

I will have the fourth grade students use PowerPoint. They will have one slide for each fact. They will choose one image for each slide. They will write their sentence in the notes section. This will become the basis for all PowerPoint presentations. I want their notes to become the bedrock of their presentation with the images as support for their words in all grades through the eighth grade.

Further Research
Once we complete these preliminary steps, I will want to have the fifth grade students do another research project. In the next project, I will expect them to build on the idea of gather seven facts to creating a more substantial and less formulaic paragraph in Word.

Thanks for the idea Brian!

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Image Citation:
Levers, Andreas. "Spoons." 96dpi's photostream. 13 Feb 2009. 12 Mar 2008.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2001/2328898956_928652bc31.jpg?v=0

Mac with baskets - my image.

PB Wiki and the Seventh Grade Animations

The seventh grade has been using The Gimp to create animated aquariums. I've worked on this exercise with past classes. This year, we've been talking about copyright, Creative Commons, and the public domain. It's now time from them to select a license for their work.

PB Wiki
Over the summer, I became a certified PB Wiki educator by completing their online Summer Camp in 2008. You can pre-register here now. It was fairly easy and really had great tutorials to learn the ins and outs of PB Wiki. Like all other things, I created the wiki, but have really relied on what I know - WIkispaces.

By completing the course, I was given a Gold account. I knew that it would come in useful because it has a large amount of online storage and different kinds of security features. Over the summer I planned a lesson to create animated GIFs. This account would be the perfect place to hold the files.

Some Things Are the Same
The basics of wiki editing are very much the same in both PB Wiki and Wikispaces. The both have a WYSIWYG editor. I use the same type of file naming conventions in both spaces. I can import files, use embed codes, and display any type of content I can imagine.

Some Things Are Different
It took me a bit of time to remember how to import files, set up students without email by creating classroom accounts, and create and use templates from the summer course. PB Wiki's help manual is great. I easily found all these items by searching their help manual.

What I Really Like
When I learned about folders in the summer course, I wasn't sure why I would want to use them. Wiki files pile up pretty quickly. It was so easy to create a folder called Commons. Now each of the files related to this project are all in one neat folder making it easier to grab the page I need.

Coming Soon - Aquariums
Over the week of February 9th, the seventh grade will be uploading their aquariums. Mine is at the top of this post. They will look at my page to see how their Creative Commons, public domain, or full copyright citations should appear. Some of the students have made some really nice animations. I am looking forward to seeing what type of license they choose and reading their explanation of why they made that choice.

Winter Wonderland and Third Grade Research

Back in December, Kevin Jarrett over at Welcome to NCS-Tech! wrote a post about research skills called On searching, web literacy, and the ubiquitous "animal report". I've been giving that topic thought since becoming a teacher seven years ago.

Personal Experience
My two sons are no better and no worse than the average student at our school in their research skills. We've given them a lot of attention at home to try and help them learn what they do not seem to understand from their classroom lessons. In the computer class, we have completed mini projects and learned various search skills. I have come to the same conclusion as Kevin, online search skills really must be follow book based skills. I hope I paraphrased you correctly, Kevin.

Winter Wonderland January Project
I have had some trouble getting the January Winter Wonderland project off the ground in Kindergarten and first grade. I wasn't able to find a project I wanted to use with Kindergarten and the first grade is working on Dance Mat Typing. I've really been working hard with the third grade, although it wouldn't be apparent from my student's wiki page.

The Penguin Glyph
I really liked the Penguin Glyph project. Amber Coggin put the files together. They are under the January heading on the activities page. We start using PowerPoint in the fourth grade. For the third grade, this glyph is a great introduction to the PowerPoint screen and the idea of glyphs in general. Her PDF file explains what the various colors represent (such as orange feet would mean a boy created the penguin).

I wanted to do more and I thought this would work well as a research project as a group activity over several classes. The big question was: How?

The Big Six
I did some research on teaching basic skills and came up with several Big Six resources. I found that for younger students they call it the Super Three. One of the most obvious points is to come up with a focused question to ask the students. I decided something simple would be to ask: How is a penguin different and similar to our state bird. We've been picking at the question a little every week.

First Focus: The Eastern Goldfinch
Our state bird is the Eastern Goldfinch. I found a nice printable sheet on the American Goldfinch on the Little Explorer's website. Before giving the student's the sheet, I asked some questions using the Promethean Activotes.

Without prior discussion: 1 child clicked A) Emperor Penguin, 6 children clicked B) Eastern Goldfinch, and 3 children clicked E) American Robin.

Two children chose B) Hair and eight children chose F) Tails.
















Three children chose A) Seeds and seven children chose B) Nectar. We had an interesting discussion about what type of birds eat nectar and what type of beak shape they require.
















One student chose A) in pine trees, two students chose B) in weedy grasslands, 1 child chose C) in a building, 4 students chose D) at the edge of a pond, and one student clicked E by mistake.
















This question also prompted some interesting size discussions as one child chose A) four inches, one child chose B) twelve inches, 2 children chose C) four feet, and six children selected D) one-half inch.

Drawing in Kid Pix
Armed with these images and the discussion, I gave the students a printout from Enchanted Learning. It has a black and white outline of the American Goldfinch. I asked the students to do their best job to sketch the bird in Kid Pix. I projected some photographs on the screen from Flickr so the students could try to match the bird's coloring. The student's images are really turning out quite well.

Next Steps
In an upcoming post, I will talk about how we practiced reading for information while integrating the Activotes. We will also be using the Activotes to look at scanned images from a book about penguins and read to find information.

These are some good first steps to leading my students to find information in print in the third grade. Your thoughts and insights are welcome to help me extend the lesson.

Monster Project Year Two

Click on the image for a larger version.

This is my second year working on the Monster Project through Wikispaces with Anna Baralt. Things are going much smoother this year because I had it planned in advance. Last year I jumped in with two feet and just ran with the drawing and the writing.

Much More Prep
The students have listened to Many Luscious Lollipops and found adjectives from last year's monster wiki descriptions on the Activboard. The found their favorite food on Kidspiration 2 and completed the chart for adjectives representing the feel, taste, smell, sound, and sight of the food.

We Drew the Monsters
The second grade teacher said the writing portion of the project was very hard last year because the students didn't use standard, easily defined shapes. This year I recommended that they use circles, ovals, rectangles, triangles, and other shapes they could name for the body parts. We also talked about straight, curved, and curly lines.

Kidspiration Template for Monsters
Last year, Anna said she used a worksheet to help the students develop the monster adjectives. I made one based on the image in our Monsters Bloom in Our Wiki presentation from the K12 Online Conference. Already I see that I should include a box for legs. I will add the template to the Monster Project wiki tomorrow. I showed the second grade teacher and she feels that this will give her a huge leg up on creating the actual monster descriptions in class.

I think it will take two classes to fill in the template. We are probably about 75% complete. It is great because they are filling the chart in pencil. They can bring the chart over, I can point out what might be missing (such as a number, size, position on the body, shape, or color) and they can go back to try again. We will listen to Go Away Big Green Monster during the next class and follow it with Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What is an Adjective for the second template filling class..

I'm So Lucky
I did offer to have the students create the descriptions in computer class, but the teacher is really excited to help the students. Once the templates are complete in about two weeks, she will help them write the descriptions in class. At that point, they can be typed into Word and shared with our partner classes.