Book Trailers by MPS Grade 6

Mr. Baskerville's Grade 6 class at Major Pratt School has been working on creating book trailers to showcase some of their favourite books!   We started by watching some book trailers and determining what elements should be included in a good book trailer.   This process of co-constructing criteria gave students a list of elements and features to include in their videos.

Next, students were given a graphic organizer to plan the content for their trailer.  Once students had done some planning for their trailers, they were introduced to Powtoon and given an overview of the tool.   Students were also introduced to sites for sourcing public-domain images such as Pixabay and Unsplash.

Students then spent additional work sessions putting together graphics, text, animations and music to bring their plans to life!   Some of the book trailers are now complete and published on YouTube (with permission). 

Watch some book trailers below to see the final products or visit our YouTube playlist.

The Truth About Twinkie Pie by Kat Yeh
Book trailer by Julie


Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Dog Days by Jeff Kinney
Book trailer by Otello


Diary of a Wimpy Kid- Meltdown by Jeff Kinney
Book trailer by Kenneth


Zombies Attack! The Rise of the Warlords Book 1 by Mark Cheverton
Book trailer by Drighton

I Survived the Hindenburg Disaster by Lauren Tarshis
Book trailer by Alex

Can You Say Catastrophe?  by Laurie Friedman
Book trailer by Alexsa

TBH, This is So Awkward by Lisa Greenwald
Book trailer by Charlie



Haunted Canada by Joel A. Sutherland
Book trailer by Caden


I Survived the Attack of the Grizzlies by Lauren Tarshis
Book trailer by Katie
Jedi Academy by Jeffrey Brown
Book trailer by Nathan

Gingerbread Baby: A video by RES Grade 1/2

The Grade 1/2 class at Rossburn Elementary School recently read Jan Brett's story "Gingerbread Baby".   Today, they created their own talking Gingerbread babies using their gingerbread drawings and the ChatterPix  app.   Students had to think about what the Gingerbread Baby might say and then record their ideas.   Their video looks great!

Are you OK? A book by Decker Colony School Grades 7&9

One of the neat things about being a teacher leader and working in many different schools with many different grade levels is that I sometimes get to do a learning activity more than once.   If you read my previous post, you'll see that I used Amy Krouse Rosenthal's The OK Book as inspiration for a writing project with a class in Binscarth a few weeks ago.   Today I visited the Grades 7 & 9 class at Decker Colony School and also shared The OK Book with them.  We used this text as inspiration for illustrating, writing and publishing our own book using Google Slides.  This group had lots of fun with their illustrations and with language, particularly the -er word endings for each sentence.  Check out their finished product below!

It's OK to be OK: A Book by Binscarth Grade 4/5/6

After a semester spent teaching a fabulous grade 6 class at Hamiota Collegiate, I am back in the role of Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for my school division.  In this role, I get to travel around the division supporting teachers and students with using technology in education.   Today, I was lucky to work with the Grade 4/5/6 class at Binscarth School.   I shared with them one of my (many) favourite picture books, The OK Book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.   We used this text as inspiration for creating our own book, which is now published below! 

How did we create this?

First, I read aloud The OK Book and we had a great discussion about the message of this book.   Next, each student chose something they are "OK" at.   They received a template with the OK "stick figure" on it and sketched their illustration.   I photographed their work and uploaded to a shared file for students to access.   Next, students accessed a shared template.   Each student was assigned a slide/page number to use.   Students then inserted their illustration and typed their sentence to go with it.   We brainstormed possible titles and then cast ballots to vote for the best title.   I think their finished product is pretty awesome!

Human Rights Project

One of the exciting learning activities that my grade 6 class worked on this semester was their human rights project. They studied the human rights in their social studies class and had the idea to create videos to explain each of the 30 rights.  Since their social studies teacher only has 30 minute classes, we decided to make this an interdisciplinary project and use our ELA class to explore video creation.

The students learned to plan videos, write scripts, film scenes and edit videos.  In creating their first "batch" of videos, most groups chose to act out scenes.   When students reflected on the process, they felt strongly that making their videos was harder than they anticipated.   They weren't sure they wanted to continue creating videos.   We gave it some time and then I proposed that we try a different method for creating videos.   Instead of filming their own clips, the students used video clips, photos and characters available in Powtoon to create their videos.  This was a different creative process for the students and, based on their feedback, they felt more successful in creating videos this way. 

The students built a website with Google Sites to showcase their work and I'm pleased to say that all videos are now uploaded!   Please check out their work here. 

Sarah's Passion Project: The History of Dance

This is a guest blog post written by grade 6 student, Sarah.

Our grade 6/7 Character Ed class is working on projects, but these projects aren’t just normal projects, they’re Passion Projects! All of us are putting together a project that shows what we’ve accomplished over the days. We got to choose what our projects would be about! My passion project is about the history of dance and how it has become what it is today. Our passion projects are about what we love! This is my Passion Project:

History of Dance

By: Sarah Chappell

King Louis the 14th first invented ballet for a wedding in 1459. Dancers would dance about the dishes being served. Pierre Beauchamp, King Louis’ teacher, became the first dance director in Paris for the first ballet training school in 1671. In the 1700s, ballet became more popular and King Louis performed as a dancer. Pierre also invented the technical term “turnout” in ballet.
People from different cultures even incorporate dance into their cultures. Dancing is important for different cultures because it helps them embrace who they are and their cultures. Some cultures dance during celebrations.

Some of the most popular dances are…. Hip-Hop, which is street dancing performed with usually Hip-Hop music. Tap Dance, which is basically just tapping on a hard surface with technical form, of course! Belly Dance, which is when people move their bellies in different ways. Break Dancing or B- Boying, which is when people pop and lock and resist your motions, or just doing awesome tricks! Lastly, ballet, which is a VERY VERY technical art that is performed with such grace, passion and emotion!

In the 1830s a lady named, Marie Taglioni, made dancing on Pointe very popular. She danced a ballet for her father and after her last beautiful, moving performance, the people were so sad to see her go that one chef took her ballet shoe and cooked it! They say that all of her fans ate it too!


Also in the 1840s, a man performer named, Marius Petipa, made more than 60 ballets. His assistant, Lev Ivanov, choreographed some of the most popular ballets today! His work included, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty!!

There are many places around the world that dance in different ways to express their culture and religion. China has the dragon dance, Cuba has the Salsa, Russia has ballet, Switzerland has the traditional folk dance, Argentina has the tango, and Brazil has the Samba, just to name a few! Not all countries or cultures just have to stick to one type of dance, everyone can just dance to their own rhythm!

Dance today is all about freedom and imperfection, (unless you’re in a competition, but if you’re not then you can just dance freely!) You should just be able to do what you really love! Dance today has many more styles that suit everyone, and it has lots of movement and freedom!   

Dances in different cultures are more traditional and dances in my culture/country can be more technical and professional, but it can also be non-competitive and flowy!

Clearly, dance was very different a long time ago compared to dance now! But they do have some similarities, freedom, commitment, and passion!  What I’ve learned is that dance is a passion and it’s….. I can’t explain it but, it just makes you feel free and safe and it takes your mind off of everything else in the world! Dance is my passion!   

Sources:

https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/arts-and-culture/photos/dance-around-the-world-photos

http://www.allrefer.com/10-most-famous-dance-styles-in-the-world

http://www.camarilloacademy.com/2011/09/why-dance/

https://www.sasschoolofdance.com/history-ballet

Passion Projects: Haily's Hockey Project

This is a guest blog post written by Grade 6 student, Haily.

In our grade 6/7 class we are doing passion projects! That means you can pick anything that you are passionate about as long as you can show that you are learning something. Some of the passion projects are putting on bake sales, talent shows learning more about sports and history and making paper mache  and much more! Our class has really enjoyed learning about the things we love to do!

For my passion project I did a research project about hockey facts and players. I included things like the top point leaders of 2019, trivia, best hockey team and best hockey player ever and more. The file is set up so you can play the trivia if you download it.

- Haily Johns

Classroom Energy Diet 2019

My grade 6 and 7 students are participating in the 2019 Classroom Energy Diet .  The challenge encourages classrooms across Canada to complete challenges to conserve energy and raise awareness about energy consumption.   We've learned quite a lot over the last several weeks and the challenges have inspired us to read, write, research and create!  I like that this kind of contest can be a springboard for meaningful learning or even project-based learning.    I wanted to share some of the great work my students have done as part of their contest.

Recycled Art

The task was to create art from recycling and my Grade 6/7 Character Education class rose to the challenge!  I kept this challenge fairly unstructured and let students plan their design, find the recycling items and develop their own creations as individuals or in small groups.   We ended up with a wonderful variety of art projects, including:  

• cardboard creations: a robot, a barn, a miniature city, Angry birds from toilet paper rolls
• cardboard canvases: students painted on recycled cardboard instead canvas or art paper
• paper mache from recycled newspaper
• pencil holders made from toilet paper rolls or plastic bottles
• a bird feeder made from a plastic bottle

One Hour, No Power

We've been turning off our lights, computers and power bars when we don't need to use devices to reduce energy consumption in our classroom and we challenged other classrooms to try it too! 

A student-created poster promoting One Hour, No Power

Energy-Saving Tips

For this challenge, we were tasked with researching energy-saving tips and sharing them in our school or online.   I provided a planning template to guide students in selecting a product to create, identifying a target audience and a platform for sharing.  Some students decided to create posters to share in our hallways and others created digital posters to share online.  One group wrote energy saving tips to share on our school's digital sign and another group presented to students at the elementary school.  One group launched a "game" and social media campaign - they posted small notes with energy-saving tips around the school and encouraged students to find the tips, photograph them and share them on social media.   

Energy Saving Tips inspired from @olcskinders.  @HamiotaSchools @Energy_Lit pic.twitter.com/ycE4VoUhlr

— Mrs. Obach's Class (@MrsObachsClass) April 11, 2019

Here are some tips for saving energy please share. #EnergyDietChallenge #parkwestSD pic.twitter.com/ZcDNDIwtuN

— Mrs. Obach's Class (@MrsObachsClass) April 10, 2019

Our Beliefs: Setting Classroom Expectations

My term position as LwICT teacher leader for my school division ended recently and I started teaching Grade 6 when second semester began on February 3rd.  I was interested in having students provide their input on classroom expectations, learning activities and classroom procedures/routines, so we spent some time in our first few days developing belief statements.  

First, I shared my own belief statement with students and talked about what those ideas mean to me.

Next, we did some brainstorming as a class.  We used the whiteboards to generate ideas in response to several questions.  We thought about what makes a good student, what makes a good teacher, what types of activities we'd like in our classroom, how we'd like to be treated, things we'd like to keep the same and things we'd like to change. The students gave some wonderful suggestions and we've been working on incorporating their ideas.

Our final step was to take the ideas from our brainstorming and summarize them into a class belief statement. The poster below is what our class came up with and I think it's a fabulous list of things to strive for!

The students requested that their belief statement be printed as a poster for our classroom and we're lucky to have a large-format printer in our school, so it now hangs in our classroom as a beautiful reminder of what we're working towards as a class!

Booksnaps : A Different Kind of Reader Response

In the last few weeks, I've had the chance to try out creating booksnaps with some PWSD students.  I've seen booksnaps before and I liked the idea, so when I had some ELA teachers willing to try a project with me, we decided to show students how to respond to a text in this way.

I started by revisiting these resources from Tara Martin and then I created my own booksnap (see below!)  Since our school division recently started using Google Suite for Education, I elected to use Google Slides to create mine because I knew students would have access to that tool.  I checked out #booksnaps on social media to see some samples, then watched this video on using Slides for booksnaps and finally got into the creation process!

What's so great about booksnaps?

I like that this kind of "reader response" allows students to respond to a text using visual elements such as clipart, emojis or bitmojis.

This is an alternative to traditional written reader response that allows students to share their ideas using creative visuals and short captions.

It can be a quick way for students to represent their connection(s) to a text.

Creating a booksnap provides an opportunity for digital design.   I think that it is important that students learn to present their ideas in a variety of formats, including digital ones!

Tips for Creating Booksnaps in Google Slides

Take a photo with a built-in camera using Insert>Image>Camera or take a photo with your phone or iPad and upload it to the Google Drive app, then use Insert>Image>Drive

Change your page setup to make it the size/layout you want by going to File>Page setup>Custom

Add a text box and format the outline colour and fill colour to customize your caption box.

Use the line tool to "draw on your image" by selecting the curve setting.

Use the line tool to add arrows by selecting the arrow setting.

Find copyright-free/public domain images and clipart at a website such as openclipart.org and use the drag and drop method to add them to your slide.   Select the image, drag it up to the tab where slides is open and drag it back down.

Save your creation as an image file using File>Download As>JPEG image or PNG image

Share your snap on social media with #booksnaps

More Tools for Booksnaps

There are lots of ways to create booksnaps.  Some other tools that work well for this type of response include:

• Snapchat (the original inspiration for these snaps)
• SeeSaw
• PicCollage

Student Samples

Thank you to the Miniota Grade 7/8 students and the BCI grade 7 students for sharing these samples! Each class got to view some sample booksnaps and create a criteria list for what should be included in their work, then they got busy creating these beautiful responses!

Book Creation with Google Slides

Helping students publish their writing is something I've done in my own classroom and while supporting other classrooms in my role as Literacy with ICT teacher leader.  I think that publishing student writing is a great way to share student work with a wider audience, while integrating technology and encouraging students to polish their work to share with others.   I've blogged about How to Create Digital Books before, but I've recently been exploring another option for book creation.  Our school division is currently transitioning to Google Suite for Education, so our students and teachers now have access to Google tools.   Inspired by Eric Curts' ISTE presentation, Beyond the Slideshow, I've worked with some students and teachers to create books using Google Slides.   I don't have any samples to share just yet, but I do have some tips that I've found helpful!

Ways to Use Google Slides for Book Creation

• whole-class book

• individual book

• choose your own adventure story

• e-book, manual, textbook or guide

Tips for Using Slides for Book Creation

for a class book, create one slide (with a sentence starter, if desired) and duplicate it
Slide>Duplicate

take photos of student work on your iPad or tablet and upload them with the Google Drive app
Insert>Image>Drive

to avoid copyright infringements, check out these sources for images:
openclipart.org
pixabay.com

Use the “Drag and Drop” method to easily insert images

• click on image from website
• drag to Slides tab
• drag down onto slide

Share student books
File>Publish to web

• provides a link and opens in full-screen presentation mode

File>Download as>PDF

• saves as a PDF File

Create an audiobook by recording narration with Screencastify

Create a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure non-linear text by linking text to a slide

• highlight text, right click and choose link
• choose “slides in this presentation”
• choose the appropriate slide to link 

Have fun with fonts

Click on font menu and choose MORE FONTS

Apply a default font

• Slide>Edit Master
• Select all text and change font
• Exit slide master

Try making it collaborative

• SHARE button at top right, create a sharing link or share through Google classroom
• with large groups, I suggest assigning each person a slide number for their work

Helpful Resources for Using Slides for Book Creation

User Guide for Google Slides by Eric Curts

Teaching TechNix: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Shake Up Learning: How to Create an e-book with Google Slides

e-book template from GoogleAppsAction.com

My Pickup Has Hiccups-  storybook sample from Eric Curts 

Google Slides for Student Created Storybooks – blog post by Eric Curts