First session on Monday

The presenter is a 5th grade teacher. Her session was about a digital platform for identifying and analyzing literary elements. After teaching the skills with picture books the teacher moved the students into a novel. She chose novels at different levels so her high readers had something challenging to read and her low readers were not overwhelmed. She uses learning.com to give students their instructions and within this program students/teachers can send messages back and forth. Learning.com is a subscription program…sounded expensive. She loves it. I think I can do the same thing using the sync program and other available free sites. She had a list of four projects for the students to complete after reading their novel. (It appeared to me that the reading of the novel and the project was independent based.)
The students created a web about the main character’s traits using readwritethink.org. This website doesn’t save responses so students will need to complete the activity and print.
Then the students used character trait words to describe their character using wordle.net. It would be fun to print in color if a color printer was available. Lauracandler.com has a list of character traits students can use.
The third project was a three panel comic strip using a paid site showing their favorite part of the story. I think the same thing can be accomplished using publisher or possibly readwritethink.org.
The final project was a book cover using readwritethink.org. She had to watch kids to keep them from going on the internet and looking for the actual book cover and copying and pasting. She wanted them to design a book cover that showed what they got out of the book.
She used a rubric to assess the finished projects. The students were given the rubric before the project started so they knew what was expected of them. Loved the reminder about readwritethink.org and the addresses for the other websites along with the ideas. I want to get a copy of her rubric. Great session.