Diary of a ______

After reading and discussing Diary of a Fly my students were asked to create diary entries from the viewpoint of either a silkworm or butterfly. These were 2 insects we raised in class and followed through their life cycle.  I left the app open to them, most chose Popplet.

Alternative energy centers

Last week my students rotated through alternative energy stations. They played with solar cars, a wind-powered carousel, and a water-powered ferris wheel. For each activity, I had a list of experiments for them to do and related questions. Rather than have them answer the questions on a ditto as I did in the past, I asked them to create a Popplet with some of their observations.

Creating a Concentration Game

Using Doodle Buddy students created pairs of related terms/drawing. For example, one picture might have an analog clock and another picture a digital clock, both displaying the same time. The terms covered all topics we learned this year including science and social studies vocabulary, contraction, and synonyms. Students imported the pairs into the app MakenMatch and then played each other in a game of concentration.

Taking Care of the Environment

I broke students into groups and gave each group a different book to read. The topics were conserving water, keeping lakes/rivers/oceans clean, keeping the air clean, and conserving electricity. Each group created a poster using any app of their choice. Ahead of time we talked about and looked at different posters. We discussed the fact that posters are filled with a picture and usually have little text. The text is used to give a specific message. The apps the groups chose were Doodle Buddy, Drawing Pad, and Strip Design.

Character Trait Popplet

As we wind down Project Cornerstone for the year we used Popplet to review character trait words. I listed character trait words such as honest and helpful on the board. Pairs of students created a Popplet for the different words. Each Popplet had the character trait in the middle and then 4 bubbles around it giving a synonym, antonym, a picture showing the word in action, and the word used in a detailed sentence. Popplets can be emailed as either JPEG or PDF files. I prefer JPEG because then the Popplet is displayed in the body of the email so I don't have to open an attachment to see the work.