11.5 Thing#2

I really enjoyed wordle. The fact that it enlarges words that frequently appear in order to help you figure out what the main idea might be is great. I think that this would be great for kids to use for science or even social studies, i.e.- Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address. I chose to use William B. Travis last letter written from the Alamo. What a great way for kids to understand text that might be hard to understand by pasting it into wordle and allowing it to help them find the main idea. It is visually fun!
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VoiceThread: I think this is a really cool way for kids to learn or teach others. They could use it for social studies. They could choose a picture from history and make up a story based on what they have learned from the time period. They could become one of the people from the picture and tell the story from that perspective. It would be a good use for younger students and struggling older children in the area of writing. It can help with story mapping, fluency and flow of story writing. if they tell the story orally then they could write it and embellish as needed. Some children are better story teller orally. Children could choose a math problem to solve, science they could take turns teaching about a concept- Photosynthesis.

Animoto: This is one of my favorite tools for the classroom when the SBISD network is functioning quickly! I use this every year for my students to make an endangered species video based on the research they did for their research papers. The kiddos love it! The finished products are fabulous and I make them a cd of the animotos to take home as a memory of 5th grade.

Bookr: I have always thought Bookr was great, but every time I wanted to use it, my activity wouldn't work with it. After looking at the archives I got some great ideas. I saw a matter book, which we make one using PPT and then print it using handouts and they make a mini book of matter. I know that the younger grades use it a lot. We also make poetry books during poetry month, so they could publish their poetry and illustrations. We could scan their illustrations for each piece of poetry. At the end of the year we sum up math by making a rhyming math alphabet math book using math vocabulary for each letter of the alphabet. This would be a fun way to do this project instead of me making bound books.