PEPSICO K-12 Technology Mentor Program » George Watts Montessori Magnet

What I learned about Tadpoles from Ms. Bethea’s Kindergarteners.

Dottie Black — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:32:21 +0000

I spent three days working with Ms. Bethea’s Kindergartener’s creating Pixie 2 slide shows about the Life Cycle of the Frog. First I brought the laptops into the class so they could play with Pixie2.

The second day we created the slides with the 5 stages and the third day we added words, background colors, music and narration. The students decided what they wanted to say in the narration and then we wrote it on a white board for them to read into a microphone. They did a fantastic job as you can see below and I learned a lot about tadpoles and frogs. (and how much fun it is to work with kindergarteners)

Argh-It’s fun to learn about Pirates and Technology-Ms. Daquano’s 3rd Graders make a movie

Dottie Black — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:49:55 +0000

The inspiration for this project came from Time Warp Trio: The Not So Jolly Roger by Jon Scieszka. My third graders became very curious about the real Blackbeard after reading this book during their guided reading unit. Each of them researched Blackbeard on the computer and produced 5 facts about him. They shared their findings with each other, but still had many questions about him.

This is where the movie came into play. They each wrote down one question they still had about Blackbeard. I researched the answers and wrote it into a script as if the kids were interviewing Blackbeard. A fellow coworker agreed to play the role of Blackbeard (hidden behind a screen).His identity was a surprise. My students asked him their questions and used an Ipod to record the interview.

After listening to their interview, they found pictures on the internet of Blackbeard that would fit their answers. They came up with a script to put at the beginning and made up a song for the end of the movie. They even created their own story about being the last buccaneers to interview Blackbeard before he died. I used Audacity to edit the interview and placed the edited sound and pictures into Frames to make the movie.

Here is the result:

Mrs. Carinder’s Class Animation Projects

Dottie Black — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 21:38:31 +0000

Completed animation projects from Cathy Carinder’s class at George Watts Montessori Magnet…

Miss Muffet (QuickTime file)

Humpty Dumpty (QuickTime File)