Our fifth grade students recently finished creating their book trailers and they turned out great! A book trailer is an advertisement for a book...like a movie trailer. For this project, students worked alone or in pairs. After selecting a recently read book that they wanted to promote, the students then created a storyboard to organize their thoughts.
Once the storyboard was created, the students then used the iPads to select several pictures from the Internet to go with their stories. They learned how to use Google search tools to modify their search results to include only pictures that are labeled for noncommercial reuse.
After selecting pictures to use, some of the students used the ComicBook! app to make speech bubbles with the words they wanted to say. Then, these images were loaded into iMovie to create the finished project. Other students simply loaded the pictures directly into iMovie and added words there. Finally, music was added along with a credits slide.
Our students learned many skills by making book trailers. They learned how to determine important ideas from the text and convey these ideas in a creative way. The students practiced using a graphic organizer to organize their thoughts. They learned how to modify their Google search to include images that were acceptable to use and how to cite their image sources. Finally, the students had fun using the iPads and the ComicBook! and iMovie apps!
Here are a few of our trailers:
The completed book trailers have been loaded into Destiny, our library catalog system. When students are looking for books to read in Destiny, they can watch trailers created by Harrison students! The book trailers can also be found on our library website: https://sites.google.com/site/hsd36libraryresources/homepage/book-trailers-2015.
Enjoy and happy reading!!
Earlier in February, we started an after school LEGO club at Harrison School! We've had two meetings already and so far, it's been fantastic!!
Why did we decide to start this club? There are so many benefits to building with LEGOS. When students build with LEGOS, they have improved fine motor skills. They learn cooperation and problem solving skills. They have increased creativity and a boost in confidence. And, most important, the students have FUN while all of this learning is taking place!! Building with LEGOS is the perfect STEM activity for elementary age students.
Logistics of our club: In order to purchase our LEGOS, we started a Donor's Choose campaign. Local families and strangers from far away donated to our project which became fully funded in January. Also, two families saw our Donor's Choose project and decided to donate a VERY large amount of LEGOS that they already had. Combined with the LEGOS purchased through Donor's Choose project, we had more than enough to start our club!
Our club meets two times per month after school for one hour in the library. We opened the club up to students in grades 1-4 and we started with 30 members (with 20 more on the waiting list). After our first meeting, we decided to bump up our numbers to 42 because we realized that we had the space to accommodate more students. We probably won't be able to add any more because the library is quite full with 42. For next year, we may split up the club into smaller grades (i.e. grades 1-2, 3-4) so that we can accommodate more students. During our first meeting, we had the students decide on appropriate rules to help our club run smooth. We also begin each meeting with a small snack.
Each meeting will have a different theme. Students can building something related to the theme, or they can build something different. Our first theme was "build something that flies" and our second theme was "build a creature". If students decide to build something related to the theme, we will display it on the counter around the circulation desk for all to see until our next meeting.
It is amazing to see the students working together, using their creativity, being totally engaged the entire time, and having FUN!! At the end of our second meeting, we asked the students what they liked about LEGO club so far. Here are some of their responses: "being creative" "building with a friend" "the themes" "being able to build anything, not just the theme" and "seeing what everyone else builds".
We can't wait to see all of the great ideas that our students come up with in future meetings!
Welcome back! For the month of January, our students in grades 2-4 participated in a Mock Caldecott Unit! For this unit, we read six books that were contenders for the 2015 Caldecott Award. Then, the students voted for which book they thought should win the award and which books should be the honor (runner-up) book. Finally, students had to tell why they chose the books that they did. The six books we read were:
This is the document that the students used to vote with:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wn4NNCU-RfxsFzRSwJmJbVp8hoCtO_dbPjCa6dtb-X0/edit?usp=sharing
We were excited to find out that The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend won the actual Caldecott Award and Sam and & Dave Dig a Hole was an honor book! These were two of our favorites as well!!
Our friends from Old Bethpage Elementary School in New York are reading the same six books that we read and then we hope to Skype with them at the end of February. We can't wait to compare notes and see if students in both schools liked the same books!
We will definitely do this unit again next year as there were so many benefits! Students were exposed to high quality literature. They had fun reading the stories with a purpose in mind...to rate the books for their illustrations and overall quality. The students had to justify their choices through writing. Finally, it was fun seeing which books won for our school and then which books won the actual award!
