Unit 5: Creativity in the Classroom

I decided to put out a survey to my second graders in regards to what apps they would like to do to be creative in class.  The majority showed interest in creating videos using animoto.  We will be creating short videos in small groups to reteach a concept learned in class.  Last year my students made a how to video on calendar math, another group did a spotlight on an author and another group taught us about verbs.  After the videos were scripted, filmed and edited we shared them with our families and the class.  The whole class voted on creating posters in piccollage.  The students can create posters to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or to activate prior knowledge by doing a word splash.  They can also create posters to introduce themselves to each other.  The next item they were all excited about doing is making digital postcards to write friendly letters and share with their families concepts we are learning in class using the app photocard.  These can be e-mailed to the parents instantly and the students can add their own photographs or pictures.  The last project the whole class voted on was creating postcards from punctuation marks.  The students take on the role of a punctuation mark and use story buddy to create an image showing the punctuation mark on vacation somewhere.  Then they write a letter to our class explaining where they are, what they are doing and why it is important that they come back to our class soon.  These are then printed and displayed in the classroom.

When I asked the class what technology they like that we are using in the classroom now to be creative they said that they enjoyed using the netbooks to write on kidblog and using the smartboard to watch videos clips about a topic, learning through Prezi presentations like the one on book genres, listen to songs to learn a concept and playing games.  They also enjoy using manipulatives like base ten blocks on the smartboard to work through math problems because it is easy and fun.

The things they like about the iPads now are magnet letters to practice their spelling patterns, storypatch and scribble press for making books, puppet pals where they can retell the story using puppets of the characters and settings from their book, and voicethread where they take a picture of the book they are reading and then do a verbal book review and read their favorite part.