The art and craft of teaching with technology
This “grow grow grow butterflies” lesson guides students through the butterfly life cycle by following a group of butterfly eggs as they grow into butterflies. The Google site gives them a home base for this unit, teaching them about the life cycle of a butterfly and giving them access to all the links needed to engage with the content.
I really liked using this website to create short stories! For this assignment I did a basic lesson for a kindergarten level class all about shapes. I think this website can be used to teach simple lessons like this one, or more detailed ones. Either way I think it would work well for any type of lesson or story. I can see myself using this in the future for many different things in the classroom. It was very easy to use.
I created a cook book about fractions in recipes for my 6th grade class. This book would be a collaboration between students and me, where students would create their own pages and then all the pages would be combined into one class book that could be sent out to each family. This cookbook would be the final product of a long project where students would explore how fractions are used in cooking and baking.
Using Book Creator I published a yearbook for my second grade students and families. Although many schools have yearbooks available for purchase, I think it is always nice to provide students with a more specialized reflection of their school year. My hope for creating this book is that students will include photos of their work and activities that occurred throughout the year. I also hope that students will be excited to work on this collaborative project that incorporates technology!
I think Book Creator was a user friendly resource that allows the for the production of almost anything. The website for this resource is well organized and has a visually pleasing array of tools. I think Book Creator would also be a fun activity for students to work on as they can access their account from school and from home.
Using Book Creator, I published a book for my first grade classroom. This book would be used as a resource for my students to get to know their peers and classmates. This website is very easy to use and I enjoyed making the book. I can see myself using this in my future classroom!
Using book creator I created a book that can be used for students age K-2. The lesson surrounding this book really focuses on what to do one another person—in the instance of the book another student—tries to dip into your bucket. If I wanted to make this more meaningful to the student as a lesson we could create the story as a class based on real scenarios they may need help working through.
Featured image: Pixabay
This creation would be used almost as schedule a teacher would have on the board. These pages would guide the students through the things we would be doing until lunch. I like this app because it could be applicable for all subjects but I like that it added another layer while we did silent reading and then reading journals because the format is a book. This would be multiple lessons as we are completing our routine before lunch. This book would be meant to help guide students with what to be looking at as they silently read and do their reading journals. I also like that I was able to use images to match my writing to give my students visuals. I especially like the visuals and thought bubbles to help guide my students while they are working in their reading journals. This will also serve as another way for the students to access what I was working on with them or what I would maybe say if I am not able to help them because I am working with another student. I also like this for students to access if they are sick or on vacation and they want to know what they are missing.
This lesson is for younger students, kindergarten through second grade. I used Book Creator to create a book about the lifecycle of butterflies. If I was doing this for an actual lesson i would have students make their own Butterfly Book and have them put in projects we have been working on related to butterflies. I really liked using this tool to create a book for students, it was easy and fun to use!
Featured Image by Jondolar Schnurr on Pixabay
This lesson is geared towards second grade students. A book on Book Creator would be the ending formal assessment in an lesson about writing informational pieces. This book is supposed to serve as an example for how students can organize their books. Students will have already been planning and writing their pieces previous to making their book on Book Creator. After they have finished writing their final draft on paper; then students will get the opportunity to create their own book.
I believe that students will really enjoy creating their final informational piece on Book Creator because it allows them to be creative when creating the final outcome of their piece. Also, the use of Book Creator can enable students to connect their writing to their own pictures, that they took themselves or from home, and can make the learning process more meaningful to them.
I am absolutely obsessed with Book Creator! It is such a valuable teaching tool that I could see myself using with just about any age group. I did my example book as a report about the state of California to fit 2nd grade ELA standards, but the possibilities for this app are endless. It could be a great way for students to submit fun reports, do presentations as you can record over the pages, create a memory book, or document a science experiment. You can even turn on the function to collaborate in the app! Younger kids would be able to insert images and use limited text, while older kids could type as much as they need to. It is super user friendly; I really like how it’s equipped with a google image search for public domain images already set up. This is my favorite tool we have worked with so far and I look forward to using it with my future classes.
Featured Image by denkendewolke from Pixabay
One of my favorite lessons from my own second grade experience was writing my own fairy tale in a unit on genres of literature. I designed my Book Creator lesson with this unit, or a future unit that I could teach on fairy tales, in mind! This lesson is designed for second graders, and would serve as a chance for students to apply their knowledge of the beginning, middle, and end of a story (background/ rising action, climax, falling action/resolution). The students would be broken up into 3 groups – one group to write the beginning, one group to write the middle, and one group to write the end. Each student in each group would have a chance to write their own sentence that appropriately sets up the next sentence, showing them the importance of sequencing in a story and how every idea needs to work to further the next. Alternatively, since the students are in groups, it could also be that each group generates a certain number of sentences together, as opposed to each student writing one sentence. The students would then get to create their own pages in the book, on Book Creator, and at the end, there would be a class fairy tale. The book linked below should serve as a model – where I did everything in this case, students would get to create the entire thing themselves!
I enjoyed using book creator and thought it was very user friendly! I think second graders could be comfortable using it as a tool, perhaps with some of the more foundational elements like the background of the page or text boxes already set up for them to fill in. I can see this serving so many different purposes in the classroom and think it is an extremely valuable tool.
One of the writing standards for second grade (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.2.1) requires that students write an opinion piece in which they introduce their opinion, support their opinion with reasons, and provide a concluding statement. Rather than having them write a paragraph or essay, I think it would be fun for them to work toward this standard by writing a book about one of their dreams! Whether it’s their dream job or a fun experience they dream about having or their dream to be on a sports team or whatever dream they decide they want to share, they would share that dream by making a book. They would introduce their dream (opinion), then talk about why they have that dream or what inspired them, and finally conclude their book with a final statement about their dream (opinion). I would use this activity toward the start of the school year we can all learn a little more about one another and grow in our class community! I created the following example about my own dream to be a teacher that I would share with my students.
Featured Image by Randy Tarampi on Unsplash