Story Studio with Mrs. Howard's Kindergartens

I saw the idea for story studio shared on Instagram by Mrs. Leslie Dent Scarcello, a teacher and teacher librarian.  I saved the idea and was excited when I had the chance to share it with my colleague Mrs. Howard.  She was as excited as I was to try out this idea with her Kindergarten class.

What is story studio?

The idea is for students to tell a story orally while using loose parts and classroom materials to "show" the story.  The story is recorded to be shared.

How did we set up story studio?

Mrs. Howard found a wonderful assortment of loose parts and classroom materials to put out for students.  I modelled how to select materials from the options and then set up a scene (a playground with snow hills in my demo story).  We talked about taking the supplies we need, but making sure there is enough for everyone.  

I modelled how I would practice telling my story out loud with a beginning, middle and ending.  Then, we showed what it would look like for the video recording.  I told my story and "acted it out" with my items and Mrs. Howard video recorded for me.  

After modelling, students were allowed to select their supplies and set up their story.  We encouraged them to rehearse and let us know when they were ready to record their story.  We roamed the room to record each student on video and then posted their videos into their Seesaw learning journal for families to see. 

Students were highly engaged in their play and stayed on task so well.  Many of them were hoping to record more stories at the end of our allotted time, so that's always a great sign!  It was awesome to see and hear students express their ideas.  There was lots of originality --seldom did we find the same details in two stories!

What did it look like?

Check out this video for a few clips of the story studio experience in Mrs. Howard's classroom:

How We're Using Minecraft EDU in PWSD

I was so excited to learn that Minecraft Education Edition is now available on Chromebooks since that is the primary device our students use.  I had several colleagues eager to try out Minecraft EDU with their students once it was set up for us this spring.  It's been exciting to see what's possible with Minecraft in the classroom over the last few months.  I wanted to document and share some of the ways that we've used it so far.

Minecraft Water Cycle Representations

Ms. Lee's Grade 8 class at BCI was studying the water cycle when we got access to Minecraft EDU.  Ms. Lee decided to give her students the opportunity to work in small groups to demonstrate their knowledge of the water cycle by building a model of it in Minecraft.  I was really impresssed with students' creativity as they developed their models, especially because many of the things they were representing had to be built out of alternate materials.  For example, I saw some students creating clouds out of wool and invisible processes like evaporation or transpiration were shown through the use of glass panes in Minecraft.  You can check out two tours of a Minecraft water cycle here: 

Manito Ahbee Aki Minecraft World:
Exploring Indigenous Culture and Manitoba's Past

One of the frequent requests we had before Minecraft EDU became available for our school division was to explore the Manito Ahbee Aki world.  This incredible Minecraft world was developed with Louis Riel School Division, a division right here in Manitoba.  When this awesome project was shared in the news, many teachers were excited to experience this Anishinaabe world. 

The Manito Ahbee Aki world is meant for students to explore an area called The Forks (where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet here in Manitoba).  This world takes us back in time to learn about traditional ways of living on the land.  Students learn from Knowledge Keepers, explore petroforms (rock formations), gather supplies and craft necessary tools, go on a bison hunt and trade for seeds to start their own garden. I've supported several classes in getting started with the experience and it's been interesting and educational for each group I've worked with.  So far, we've tried in it Grades 4-8.  

Find the world and lesson details here: https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/lessons/manito-ahbee-aki

Pixelated Portraits

Mrs. Shwaluk's Grade 8s created these cool portraits in their art class.  They created a grid over a headshot of themselves, then they chose resources in MinecraftEDU to create a pixelated image of themselves. Mrs. Shwaluk said her students really enjoyed the project and, although she thought it might take a long time to build these, many students completed their portraits in about 30 minutes.  Check out a few samples below:

Survival Tips presented with Minecraft EDU

A few Grade 5 students in Mr. Coughlan's class at HES were researching wilderness survival as part of their Genius Hour projects.  These students thought it would be exciting to present their survival tips in a Minecraft world.  Check out one example below to see how they used Minecraft EDU to share their survival tips:

Student-Created Book Showcase

 A great way to showcase student work is to create a digital book. We've been using Book Creator in Park West School Division and our students have created some wonderful pieces of work to showcase their writing!  Here are a few examples of digital books students have created this year:

I Wonder...

Mrs. Smart's Grade 4 class created I Wonder books.  They developed 4 I wonder questions about an animal they were curious about, then researched the animal to answer their questions and published a question and answer book with the details they learned.  

A to Zed

Mrs. Gorrell's Grade 2 class was inpsired by a Canadian A-Z book that listed different Canadian items for each letter of the alphabet. They decided to create their own version with an Canadian word for each letter of the alphabet.

Personal Interest

Mrs. Smart's Grade 4s also wrote about one of their personal interests: whether they loved animals or Minecraft, vehicles or sports, students shared about what they love in these books. 

Student Work Showcase

With permission, the following students have shared their work. Check out this Book Creator library for examples of the wonderful work our students have done!  

Hyperdocs for Science Design Projects

 The students in Mrs. Shwaluk's Grade 7 and 8 classes at Shoal Lake School have been using technology to enhance their learning. They've agreed to let me share their recent science design project to show how technology was integrated.  

The project

As part of their science class, students were challenged to design a cooler to keep ice frozen as long as possible. They were responsible for documenting the design process and collecting data.  

The technology

Students used different tech tools to enhance their design project and the presentation of the data.  

Hyperdocs with Google Slides: Students created a hyperdoc in Slides which included each step of the design process, including details on the materials, planning, results and conclusion.  Students added links to research sources, Sheets used for data collection and videos of their initial build and re-iteration to make improvements.  

Google Sheets: Students collected their temperature data in a table in Google Sheets, which was used to create the graphs they included in their final hyperdoc.  

WeVideo: Students used WeVideo to record and edit their videos, which showed them building their coolers and then revising them based on initial testing.  

Micro:bits: Students programmed micro:bits to take temperature measurements as a way of collecting data while testing their coolers.  

The projects

I was so excited to see this student work when Mrs. Shwaluk shared it with our professional learning community!  It is such a wonderful example of how we can use technology to enhance learning and the students did a great job of demonstrating their understanding through their videos and hyperdocs.  Here are some examples from students who agreed to share their work.

Jacob's video explaining his cooler build

Reese's Hyperdoc

Optics and Light Science Research Videos by DCS Grade 7 & 8

 The following work is from Mr. Elias Wipf's Grade 7 and 8 class at Decker Colony School. Thank you to this group for allowing me to showcase their work here on the blog.

About our Research Project

These fantastic WeVideo creations were created in our grade 8 Optics and Light unit. All of these research projects were to show that light and wavelengths have energy that can be used in all kinds of applications. We all picked a topic to research, did the research, created a script for the narration, recorded and edited video, uploaded it on YouTube, and made a QR code for it so that people can access it.

Abigail:My project was X-Rays. Once the research was complete, the rest was easy. All in all I think the greatest challenge was the research, and uncovering the meanings of the complicated scientific terms. Although at some points it was challenging, I am pleased to know what is happening as the doctors and nurses are taking X-Rays.

Jesse: My research was about Satellites and Satellite dishes. In the beginning of my research, I had absolutely no idea what a Satellite or a Satellite dish was. I didn’t even know that they were used for live broadcasting. As I started researching my project, it became more and more clear in my mind. After a little more research, I can proudly say that I am now a Satellite and Satellite dish “expert.”

Gabriel: My research project was a microwave. At first my microwave research went awful. I only had about two sentences when the other students had twenty. I slowly started to advance. I was writing more words than the day before. Then I got permission to record. I wasted an entire half hour because I messed up big time. I wanted to throw my laptop through the wall. After a few minutes, I finally got it right. Now I can watch a microwave oven cook food and know exactly how it works.

Matthias: My research project was about motion sensors. I hardly knew anything in the beginning of my research. When I finally started researching, I got an Idea about how it works. I kept building on my information until I knew enough about it to start my video. So here is my finished video for you to enjoy.

The Herd's Point of View: A student-produced podcast

 The Binscarth Grade 7 and 8 class has been hard at work tackling the project of producing a podcast episode.  The Herd's Point of View Episode 1 was released May 8th and I'm really proud of the work these students have done for this project!  Miss Payne invited me to her ELA class to help out with this project and I was so glad to be involved.  I witnessed some awesome teamwork as this class planned, created and promoted their podcast.  

You can listen to their episode "Things Parents Don't Understand" which is all about sleep.  

Episode summary: We discussed one of the issues we feel our parents don’t understand, why teenagers need to sleep in on the weekends. We debated all kinds of questions to do with the topic and even got the parents’ opinions.

Creating a Podcast

If you've ever wondered what's involved with producing a podcast, here are some of the tasks this team of students tackled during this project:

• Listening to other podcasts to identify common features of podcasts
• Brainstorming topic ideas and narrowing it down 
• Creating a vision for the podcast including a theme and title
• Deciding on a target number of episodes and a release schedule 
• Scripting or outlining the episode, including planning for guests or interviews
• Naming the podcast and episode
• Recording episode(s)
• Creating an intro and outro to add to each episode
• Editing episode(s)
• Writing an episode summary and/or show notes
• Designing cover art
• Creating a promotional plan to share the podcast
• Releasing the podcast and sharing it!

Technology Tools for a Podcasting Project

The Herd's Point of View podcast production team used the following tech tools:

• Google Docs: for editing shared files when planning and scripting
• WeVideo: for recording and editing the intro, outro and episode
• Canva: for designing the cover art and promotional materials 
• Anchor FM:  Miss Payne used a free Anchor FM account to publish the finished episode

Student Ownership

One of the great things I observed when I visited the Grade 7 and 8s during this project was how they took ownership of their work. Students were assigned different roles (based on their preferences) such as scripting, recording, editing or promotion. One student might be working on the script for the episode, while another designed promotional graphics and someone else was creating the intro audio.  All of the students were involved in initial planning and all of them took part in recording the episode.  From my visits to the classroom, I could see that each student took responsiblity for their task(s) in order for the project to succeed. 

Scavenger Hunts with Seesaw

 More and more teachers in our school division are using Seesaw with students.  Seesaw is a great tool to use for collecting student work samples in a digital portfolio (or learning journal, as Seesaw calls it).  Teachers can also create or source activities for students to complete in Seesaw, which was super helpful during remote learning and continues to be useful for classroom learning activities.  

I've found some good Seesaw scavenger hunt activities created by other teachers and now created some of my own templates to share with colleagues as well.  The concept of a scavenger hunt works well for any grade level and subject area because you can customize your list of scavenger hunt items to whatever skills or knowledge your students are working on.  

I like that these Scavenger Hunt activities allow students to apply their skills and knowledge by finding examples of the concepts they've been working with.  I also like that there are many ways for students to show their examples: they could take a picture, write with the pens, type their response or even take a video.  

Examples of Seesaw Scavenger Hunts:

click the links to find these activities and creators on Seesaw

Math Scavenger Hunt 
by Leah Obach

3D Shapes Scavenger Hunt Activity
by Kirsten Lofton

Text Features Scavenger Hunt
by Mary Klempke 

Colour Scavenger Hunt

by Ronit Shapiro

Seesaw Templates for Creating a Scavenger Hunt

I like to keep a template that I can copy and edit in Seesaw to make new scavenger hunts for different grade levels or subjects. I've created a single page or multipage template, both of which you can access below! You can customize an activity by following the steps here.  

Single Page Scavenger Hunt Template

Multipage Scavenger Hunt Template

I'm pleased to be part of the Seesaw Ambssador program and I'm happy to share about this tool with my teacher friends and colleagues!  Find me on social if you have questions or would like to connect.

Connect with Leah online:

Twitter: @LeahO77 

Instagram: @kgeducation.ca @mrsobach

Facebook: @kgeducation.ca

Inside the Mailbox: a student-created book!

 I'm very excited to share this masterpiece on my blog!  The Grade 7 & 8 class at Decker School just released a book called "Inside the Mailbox".  The book was written and illustrated by this talented group of students over the past several weeks.  It began back in January when we read "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.  

I was inspired to share this book with students and teachers after seeing Ms. McLauchlan's suggestion for using it as a writing prompt.  The read aloud definitely sparked a wonderful writing project in this case.  Students brainstormed different possessions that might have complaints and then narrowed it down to the four "characters" for their book.  Their teacher, Elias Wipf, supported them with the writing process as they drafted and revised letters from the perspective of each possession.  Each student wrote 4 letters from their selected item.  They also drew incredible illustrations to match.  The letters and illustrations were put together using Mixbook.com, which is a tool designed for digital scrapbooking, but allowed for the students to have a digital book that could be professionally printed.  

I visited the student-authors this week and was thrilled to see this incredible book they've created together!  They have given me permission to share their work and I hope that so many other people will enjoy reading their book too. View it here!  

Six Word Memoirs

I've been sharing this Six Word Memoir learning activity created by Sarah Landis & Lisa Highfill with my colleagues.  I've also tried it out with a few classes and found it to be an engaging writing activity with some great options for infusing technology.  If you want to try this out, use the link to Landis & Highfill's hyperdoc above to get started!   

When I shared this activity in classrooms, we began by viewing a moving video called "The Conditioned" which is about a man named Raimundo and his life.  I've watched it several times now and it's super powerful every time.  

Students were then tasked with developing a six-word memoir to describe Raimundo's life.  Some of our Park West School Division students posted their completed memoirs to Padlet, so you can see samples  below:

Next, students thought about their own lives and wrote six word memoirs for themselves.  This was a bit more challenging, but students came up with some excellent memoirs to highlight their lives.  Once they'd chosen their six words, students designed a digital poster to share their memoirs.  Some classes used  Google Slides to put together their images and text and other classes used Canva to design their digital posters.  They turned out to be beautiful pieces of work and several students agreed to let me share their memoirs.  You can see some student samples below, courtesy of Mr. Baskerville's Grade 6 class and Mrs. Bowley's Grade 6/7 class.  

Cookies for Tanzania: A service learning project & video contest winner!

Congratulations to the Decker Colony School students in Mr. Elias Wipf's ELA class for winning the Next Vista for Learning Service via Video contest!  Their wining video, Cookies for Tanzania, tells the story of how their school has been supporting projects in Tanzania through their fundraising efforts over the past few years. This contest was created to encourage young people to "tell stories of people serving their communities" through video creation. 

The Cookies for Tanzania fundraiser sales were put on hold this year due to COVID, but this group of students found a way to continue contributing to the cause by raising awareness with their video.  Four students collaboratively planned and created the video, including sourcing images, writing a script and narrating the video to tell their story.  They also worked with students, parents and community members to obtain the permissions required for people appearing in the video.  The resulting video is a great showcase for this service learning project -- be sure to watch it below!

The video is now featured in the Next Vista for Learning video library.  

Congratulations to Matt, Gabe, Jesse and Abby on a job well done and to Elias for supporting his students in their video production project!