It is that time of year again. Most of us will stuff ourselves with turkey, ham and many other traditional Thanksgiving dishes. Maybe even finish off with a fluffy heap of whip cream with a sprinkle of pumpkin pie. Regardless of your Thanksgiving tradition, it is also a time to reflect on what we are thankful for in our lives. This is a project that I wanted my students to complete using Storyboard That.
Google Doc Template
We began this project by brainstorming the things we are thankful for in our lives. We used the template that is pictured below. Feel free to use it yourself. It is available by clicking here.
The students had the choice to fill in as many boxes as they liked. However, the minimum was four. In addition to providing the list of things, I wanted them to reflect on why they were truly thankful for the "things" in their life. It is easy to spew out the standard "things": friends, family, food, etc. By requiring them to provide the "why" students got to think a little more critically about their list.
Storyboard That
With Storyboard That, I am able to create an assignment for my students (I upgraded to a premium account). By creating the assignment, all the directions and examples automatically show up for those enrolled in my class.
Once the assignment was created, I could choose which classes to assign it to. In addition, I could add an example for them to see how to set up their storyboard. I also had the option to make my example a "template" so all they had to do was copy the template to begin creating. However, since students had the choice for how many "things" they were thankful for, I wanted to have them create their storyboard from scratch so they could customize how many boxes they wanted.
When they began to create their storyboard, they had to customize the cell so it had a title on the top and a description on the bottom. Furthermore, they had to select "Spider Map" for the layout of their storyboard.
After selecting the correct cell structure and layout of the storyboard, students were able to copy their "things" and descriptions from their Google Template. As you can see above, it was entirely up to the students to pick pictures they felt best represented their "things."
When students finished their storyboards, they were able to save it. A nice feature of Storyboard That is students can select which assignment to associate the storyboard with when saving. When my students saved their storyboards, they selected the "I am thankful for..." assignment. I am able to quickly see all the storyboards that are associated with this assignment. Changes
Thinking about this assignment, I feel like I could take this to the next level by harnessing the power of the Internet. It is easy to block out the world and focus on our little bubble that we live in everyday. I would love for my students to connect with other students around the world. Specifically, students that completed a similar project. This would provide an opportunity for my students to pop their "little bubble" and see thankfulness through a global lens. I would be curious if this could potentially inspire my students to research why some other areas of the world may be thankful for items we take for granted here in our current setting. Lastly, I wonder if this could potentially lead to my students taking on a project to provide some of those thankful "things" around the world that my students take for granted everyday. For example, if a class from around the world was thankful for water because of not having adequate clean water, would it inspire my students to attempt to solve that issue since water is in abundance in our "little bubble."
Connect
Are you a school that would like to share things you are thankful for in your lives? Do you want to create a connection to help pop our "little bubble" so we can broaden our understanding of what "things" we take for granted that are so precious to others? We would love to connect and learn together about being thankful.
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One of the skills we recently worked on was being able to draw conclusions based on the facts from the story and our own personal background knowledge. We started this conversation by watching the two videos below.
After we finished watching these short videos and drawing conclusions, we began the process of creating our own mysteries for each other to draw conclusions. Using a template, which is picture below (available on TPT for free), students began to create details for a mystery location.
After completing their mystery clues, they were to use Vocaroo to record their clues. Vocaroo is a super simple website. Clicking the record button (need to allow access to your microphone) will allow you to record your audio. You can listen after you are done and retry if you are not happy with it. End the end, you can click to save your audio clip. You are then provided with a link as well as embed code. You can even get a QR Code for your audio clip or download it as a MP3 or WAV file.
Students used a Google Form (pictured above) to submit their links to their audio clips. All of the links were compiled into a spreadsheet. This Spreadsheet was shared in Google Classroom as a view only file. Students opened up this view only file as well as created a new Google Doc. They spent some time listening to each audio clip and typing their conclusion in their Google Doc. After they had listened to all their classmates' audio clips and typed all their conclusion guesses, they attached their Google Doc to the Google Classroom assignment.
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Andrew FenstermakerInstructional Technology Coordinator | Innovation Coach | Google Certified Innovator | Presenter | Blogger | Adjunct @UiowaEducation | Owner @kids_f_i_r_s_t |