Pick-a-path google slide stories

Writing Pick-a-path stories

Using google slides on Chromebooks

• We have been learning to use google slides.  We brainstormed some different outcomes of common fairy tales and created a pick-a-path story for the reader.

• We learnt how to improve our writing by adding adjectives and nouns to extend our sentences.

• We used colour, images and changed the style of the font to improve the look of our story.

• We learnt how to create links to lead the reader to different chosen slides.

Click on the links to view some of our stories - These student's are Year 3 & 4.

• Luna and Coco's adventure

• Little Red's adventure

• The 2 wise Pigs

Animation

After spending the term working with small groups teaching them the basics of animation- I took the whole class for the day and we got to put all of the learning into practise.

Room 5 put all of their great knowledge about Animation into their own creative story.  After they had planned what their story was going to be about they created a storyboard and came up with ideas of how they would present it.

                                                                    We used plasticine

                                            Some of us had a go at using green screen with an iPad

Using a book as a background was great- using small plastic toys and pieces were easy to work with.

                                        Retelling a well known story using paper characters was very effective

                                            This lego animation was exactly the same as the storyboard so we were able to                                                                              follow it easily.

                                                Working with lego and plasticine worked well

                It was important to get the camera set up perfectly so it would only capture the scene.
 

All of the animations turned out really well and were all very different.  The class were very proud presenting and sharing them to the class as well as others throughout the school.  Adding the title and credits at the end was a nice touch that some of them did if they had enough time.

Scratch - Coding, using video sensing

Today's computational thinking session I introduced the video sensing extension blocks.

We coded to pat the cat, pop the balloon and then made a band with a cymbal and drum.  The kids had so much fun been interactive with their coding.

 

Animation

We have begun to look at animation.  We started off as a whole class and discussed animations we have watched.  After we viewed a short film of Wallace and Gromit we shared what we noticed.

The first step is to create a thaumatrope - we used two pictures opposite each other when we spun them fast the images blended into one another giving the illusion that the bird was in the cage or the fish was in the bowl.

Claymation

Using the camera on their chromebook they set up their stage 

Groups were given the task to make their ball roll, make their snake slither and make their clay grow.

Once they had viewed their work they downloaded the Clap motion app from the google chrome store.

They used a story board to draw their plan for their story.

The juniors used letters and an ipad to animate spelling words.  They started with their names.

Makey Makey

This was the first initial lesson using Makey Makey with Year 4.  It was a time to experiment while having fun and problem solving while working together with a partner,

Makey Makey

More Makey Makey

This was a whole day of learnings.  

The object of this lesson was to:  

• get the students familiar with music notes, names and values
• introduce the new Scratch 3.0
• add the new blocks to use makey makey

The outcome of this lesson required the students to:

•  create a code using scratch to a simple song or tune
•  connect a makeymakey to create an instrument to play the sound through

MAKEY MAKEY

Makey Makey

Students will show that they

• can identify the inputs and outputs of a system 
•  understand that when we give a digital device an input, the device processes it and produces an output 
•  can use an application to create original content.

Our school recently purchased a set of makey makeys.  After teaching the classes how to use scratch I introduced the makey makeys.

I began by showing them an example of a circuit i had made out of carrots, celery, play dough and bananas.  We listened to the each object make a musical note and when joined a closed circuit as a class to produce a sound.

After watching a video clip about makey makey http://makeymakey.com/ we then discussed what objects were insulators and conductors of electricity.

Their task was to find 5 objects from around the school that were conductors of electricity and set them up to produce a closed circuit and to play a tune.

A range of materials were used

Each of the students did this very well.  They had to problem solve if the circuit wasn't working.  Some common mistakes were

•  not having a wire earthed
• not touching the earthed wire when they were trying to get sound
• using a object that wasn't conductive


They worked through this very well and progressed on to making music by using on of the makey makey apps.  Piano or bongo drums

Double earthed wires required collaboration

Lead from the pencil worked well

• 
  

So much engagement from the class

They discovered they could use parts of their bodies- or other peoples!

All that hair came in handy!

Team work for a closed circuit

Honk Honk!

All ages enjoyed this

Playdough made great keys

SCRATCH

Some of the students who were a bit more competent were able to progress onto scratch.  They were able to use code to make music playing notes on different instruments.

GOOGLE DRAWINGS- Piet Mondrian

Google Drawing APP

Since a lot of the middle and senior classes no longer have Ipad in their classes, I thought I would encourage some different uses for their chrome books.
Currently they are only used for internet searching and browsing, slideshow presentations, word documents and the odd survey.

Piet Mondrian Art

We looked at a range of art that was created by Piet Mondrian.  We then went into our google drawings and created a new document.
On our blank page we inserted lines and changed the thickness  of them.  Carefully using the line tools we created straight lines, horizontally and vertically within our rectangle.

Once we had done this we then inserted rectangles and squares using the shape tool

Lastly we filled the shapes with colour using the primary colours.

They came up very effective.

SCRATCH- Math shapes

Throughout the year I have been introducing the class to code by using scratch.  I found that a lot of the students really struggled to use scratch if they were told to make something specific.

I wanted to use it in maths and relate this to geometry and shapes.

The task was set to make a square, triangle, pentagon and hexagon.  I gave them the instructions but they had to problem solve to figure which numbers to put in so they could get the right size and angle movement.