Technology Tues: Kinder Shadow Puppets

My kinder classes have each been researching a different animal in class and this year, instead of doing a different research project in the library, we decided to use their notes from the class to make videos in Shadow Puppet on the iPads.

I am not really sure why this app is called Shadow Puppet because there are no shadows and no puppets involved.  It is a video creating app using slides.  I have used 30 Hands with kinder before but wanted to try this because text can be written on the slides and there is a web image search within the app.  

We did this lesson over 4-5 thirty minute sessions.  In the first session, we made title slides in PicCollage.  I had chosen 4 pictures of each animal and loaded them onto the camera rolls of the iPads. We opened PicCollage, chose one of the pictures, added the name of the animal in a text box and then the student's name in another text box.  The student liked being able to change the color and the font of the writing in PicCollage.  Then they saved the picture to the camera roll. 

The next 3-4 sessions were for making the slides with the information they had been researching in class: what do they eat, look like, do and where do they live?  Each time I gave the student back the same iPad they originally had since all the work was saved on that iPad.  Each time we started by reviewing their class notes for one of the questions.  Then we opened Shadow Puppet, searched for a picture that matched our topic, wrote a sentence on the slide and then saved.  

The final session was for recording.  The teacher and I each called students one-by one to record their videos.  I think they turned out super cute.  

     

One thing that I did not like was the way the text broke in between words.  For example, in all the videos where we typed "penguins" the "s" is on the next line instead of making the word smaller so that it fit.  That might be something that is easily fixed but I have not figured it out yet.

All in all this was a fun project to do with the kinder kids.  

Poetry Stations

I just love it when I offer a lesson in the library and when it's over, the teachers ask, "You'll have this for us again next year, right?"  This happened multiple times last week after 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teachers brought their students in for some poetry centers that my colleague, Natalie Watts  and I created.

Both of us are hosting Poetry Alive and we wanted to promote some of the poems they would be performing.  Instead of just reading them to the kids, we came up with about 10 centers that would introduce the poems to the students and require them to complete various activities as they rotated around.  

Here are a few examples of our centers...  After reading "Ode to Family Photographs" by Gary Soto, students looked at some pictures that I had saved of families together.  The directions were to find a picture that reminds them of a time with their family and write a poem about it.  The students came up with some very clever poems.

At another center, students read the poem, "Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face" by Jack Prelutsky.  After reading the poem, they had to illustrate in DoodleBuddy on the iPad either a place described in the poem or a place on their body where they would not want their nose.  

Not all stations were technology based.  At one stations, students read the poem, "The Pig" by Roald Dahl.  Then they used highlighters to find text evidence answering certain questions.  For example, highlight with green the line in the poem that tells how the pig solved the problem.  Adding the highlighter made this an engaging activity for the students.

Yesterday, we had our Poetry Alive performance and it was great to see the recognition in the students' faces when one of the poems from our stations was performed.

Technology Tuesday: Nonstandard Measurement

Don't you just love it when you have an idea and after a couple of fails, you figure out how to do it?(sort of)  When my first graders study nonstandard measurement, I like to read them Leo Lionni's Inch by Inch.

In the past, I had pictures of the animals in the book and "inchworm" rulers for them to measure with. This year though, I wanted to try to amp it up a bit with the iPads.  I wanted them to use stickers of some kind to measure a picture.  I started off with the Doodle Buddy app, thinking they could draw the picture and then use the stamps provided in the app to measure.  The problem I ran into with this app was that I could not figure out how to move the stamps once I put them on the page.

Plan B:  Try it in my old, trusty, go-to PicCollage. 

Are there stamps?  No, but there are "stickers". 

Could I move them?  Yes and resize them!  

Could I copy them once I had a good size?  Yes, by double tapping on the sticker.  

So after reading the book.  I had the kids take pictures of each other from head to toe.  Then I walked them through getting their picture into PicCollage and showed them the features of the stickers.  For an added bonus, I had them add text.  Here are a few of the finished products.  

Are they perfect? No, but the kids got the idea that the stickers had to be stacked end to end and don't you love that Penny is 3 and a half arrows tall?  

How have you made a paper/pencil activity iPadable?