It's a Mystery!

It's a Mystery! Mrs. Boucher's fifth grade class has been studying and enjoying the genre of mysteries. The elements of a mystery are character, setting, plot, clues, distractions, and structure. Working in small groups, students wrote their own mysteries in a shared google doc to include all the elements of mysteries. After editing, the stories were transferred to a shared google slides where pictures were added for the final version.
The Crime Scenes were all set up around Proctor School!

Click on the stories below. 

Can you solve the mystery before you get to the end?

Tech Tip:

Mystery Elements Writing Guide

Rubric for this project.

Mystery Elements

BioPoems

What do you get when you mix research, poetry, green screen, and chatterpix? A FUN CREATIVE project!
Mrs. Surprise's Third Grade Class have been reading biographies and learning more about a famous person. This research led to writing a BioPoem.
The next step was to draw a Bobble Head style picture of the person. Using the iPad camera, pictures were taken on a green paper background ready for the DoInk GreenScreen app.

The Chattepix app gave voice to these famous people.

Click on the videos below to learn more from our research.

Tech Tip:

Free Template for BioPoem from Teachers Pay Teachers

Screencastify

HelpDesk students have been exploring the google extension Screencastify. 
"Screencastify is a simple video screen capture software for Chrome. Screencastify is the easiest way to Record, Edit, Annotate, Store, and Share video screen captures. Record a specific tab, or your whole desktop at the click of a button. And your whole experience is synced with your G-Suite."

Ava reviews her recording.

In the video below Ava uses screencastify to teach others how to organize their google drive.

Try using screencastify and share your video with others.

Tech Tip:

First add the extension screencastify to your google chrome account.

You will be prompted to allow the microphone and webcam.

Allow your videos to be synced to google for easy access.

When you are on the TAB view, you will have access to the other tools for recording.

Nonfiction Books by Mrs. Ford's Class

Students in Mrs. Ford's Second Grade Class have become published authors! They read, researched and wrote their very own nonfiction books. Included in each book along with the great writing, readers will find a Table of Contents, Index, and Glossary.

After the books were completed, students then used the iPad camera and recorded a Book Talk to give the reader a little information about the creation of the book.

Click on the videos below to hear their Book Talks.
Visit Mrs. Ford's Class and ask to read one of these award winning nonfiction books.

Ada
Lucas
Molly
Caleb
Sadie
Soren
Anna
JJ
Brooke
Danielle
Jack
Elise
Gwyneth
Jackson
Kiera
Jake
Nadia
Leo

As an added feature we created QR codes for each book talk and added that to the back of the nonfiction books. Now readers can not only read the book but hear the author give some background information.

Tech Tip:
All Book Talks were saved to google drive.
The google QR Code Extension was used to create the QR codes.

Global Day of Design 2017

Steward School participated in the Global Day of Design 2017. It was a day filled with fun learning. Students created, made, built, and invented! What is Global Day of Design? "Students need to make, build, and tinker. The Global Day of Design is one-day that focuses on using the Design Thinking process in school. Our goal for the Global Day of Design is to inspire a transformation in schools around the world to incorporate design into an every day practice with our students."

Sink and Float Design

Will this float?

How many marbles will it hold?

Little Pig Houses

Real Life Area and Perimeter

Let's Build

Design the Classroom

Winning Design

New Classroom Design for May

What would you create?

Tallest Lego Tower

Click on the short video below to see innovation in action.

Take a look at the tweeter feed for GDD17.

#GDD17 Tweets

We Traveled to New Mexico

Mrs. Kelleher's Class had a Mystery Skype visit with a class of students 2242 miles away. By asking Yes or No questions, students in both classes narrowed down the possibilities of locations. Students began with big picture questions such as Are you in the northern hemisphere? Are you east of the Mississippi? As clues were gathered and all students were focused on their jobs, they guessed our state first and we guessed New Mexico right after them.
The mystery continued as we tried to guess the town or city. We did stump them on our town of Topsfield.

Thank you Ms. Garcia and students from the Manzano Day School in Albuquerque, New Mexico for playing Mystery Skype with us.

Tech Tip
I use this google slide presentation to introduce Mystery skype to students. ,
Essential Question:
How can you use technology to foster collaboration, generate solutions and make informed decisions in order to successfully solve a problem?

I Want More Books

During World Read Aloud Day for the past two years the kindergarten classes have had the pleasure of connecting with children's author Sue Fliess. She kindly shares her time and expertise around the books she writes. Students ask such thoughtful questions and Sue helps promote the love of her writing.

Sue also has a wonderful sense of humor. Not to mention a great singing voice,

Recently, she sent an email asking for pictures in school libraries.

Click on the video below. Be on the lookout for someone you might recognize.