Getting Creative

When my son moved into his new apartment in early August, his bedroom walls were bare (rather depressing!), so I decided to do a painting of our pets for him.  I have been wanting to paint something for awhile, but have always put it off as I knew it would be very time consuming.  But this inspiration was the nudge I needed.  I wanted the painting to be bright and cheerful and capture the personality of our pets.

Collaborating with 2nd Grade...Incorporating Technology

I met with the 2nd grade teachers a couple of weeks ago and asked how I could assist them in any way.  We discussed different ways to incorporate technology, but the ELA CCGPS lesson plans just kept suggesting having the students do a PowerPoint.  I suggested other formats to try out Animoto, Prezi, Windows Movie Maker and after hashing around ideas we decided to use WMM as the way for the students to present their writing on the moon.  The students had worked in groups to write a story with one student writing the beginning, another one (or two) creating the middle, and one student doing the conclusion.  Each student also did an illustration for their part of the story.

I had the students take a photograph of their drawing.  Then each student recorded their portion of the story.  I used a headset microphone and used the Sound Recorder available on my laptop. You should have seen their faces as I played back their recording!  Each time it was priceless...their faces just lit up when they heard their voices and then each one would start giggling.  We also had each group record the title slide.  

I tried to download the videos, but it wouldn't work so here is the link to our school's website where Miss Davis posted the videos.http://www.docoschools.org/isecs/second_grade/Miss%20Davis/missdavis.html.