Look how engaged they are with learning through technology!
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| Wordle on the SMARTBoard |
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| Working on the wiki page |
The What?
Using technology in a 4th grade classroom is EASY! As long as you provide the students with the correct tools and time to explore those tools. For my UF graduate class, Designing Technology- Rich Curricula, I was asked to integrate technology into my lessons and share my findings.
As an educator, I struggle with integrating technology into my lessons that allow students to be the creators and produce their own artifacts using technology. I feel this assignment helped me get out of my little box and allow my students to create their own work using technology.
The Artifacts?
Class wiki on Magnets- students are learning about magnets in class. I created a wiki on our classpage for them to add their learning to it as the unit progresses along. We are still working on the unit and the wiki is not finished. This is the start of it.
Poetry using Storybird and Jing- students are learning about poetry in class. This is an alternate idea for students who are struggling with writing their own poems. Students can select a picture and use the words given to create a poem. Then students can use Jing to do a screencast of their poem and describe what the poem means to them.
Character Traits on Literary Characters using Wordle; another example, another example- we are reading "A Land Remembered" by Patrick D. Smith in class. Students were asked to create a character trait Wordle for any character in the book. We added these to our class webpage and compared and contrasted the students Wordles to others in the class.
The Verdict?
The students loved the technology assignments and asked for me to link the sites we used to our class webpage, so they could play around with it more at home and on their free time at school. The lessons weren't as scary to implement as I THOUGHT they would be. My students knew more about technology than I anticipated. I found that a few students were the perfect assistants in helping their classmates when they ran into a problem. The students had never used these tools before, but I can assure you they will use them as needed from now on.
The Rubrics?
Here are the rubrics I created for two of the assignments to grade the students with. Feel free to use or change to meet your needs.
Here are the rubrics I created for two of the assignments to grade the students with. Feel free to use or change to meet your needs.
Storybird Poem and Jing Rubric
5
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3
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1
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Theme
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Selected
words match the feel of the image student selected.
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Selected
words somewhat match the feel of the image selected.
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Selected
words do not match the feel of the image selected.
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Rhythm/Beat
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Poem
has a rhythm/ beat throughout the whole poem.
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Poem
has a rhythm/beat in some areas of the poem.
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Poem
does not have a rhythm/beat in the poem.
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Flow
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Poem
makes sense
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Poem
somewhat makes sense
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Poem
does not make sense/ string of words
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Voice
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Student’s
voice has a clear and steady pace
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Student’s
voice is somewhat clear and somewhat steady pace.
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Student’s
voice is not clear or doesn’t have a steady pace.
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Poem
meaning
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Student’s
meaning of the poem makes sense
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Student’s
meaning of the poem somewhat makes sense.
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Student’s
meaning of the poem does not make sense.
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Use
of technology
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Effectively
used technology.
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Some
errors in the usage of technology.
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Many
errors in the use of technology.
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Student Name:___________ Grade:_____/30
Wordle:
Character Traits
5
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3
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1
|
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Character
Traits
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Student
had at least 10 character traits for their selected person.
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Student
had 5-9 character traits for their selected person.
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Student
had 4 or less character traits for their selected person.
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Accuracy
|
Character
traits were accurate descriptions of chosen character.
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Character
traits were somewhat accurate of chosen character.
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Character
traits were not accurate of chosen character.
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Spelling
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Student
had no spelling errors.
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Student
had 1-3 spelling errors.
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Student
had 4 or more spelling errors.
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Overall
design
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Design
is easy to read and appropriate for the character.
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Design
is somewhat easy to read and appropriate for the character.
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Design
is not easy to read or appropriate for the character.
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Student Name:___________ Grade:_____/20
Comments or Questions?
Feel free to leave any comments or questions in the comment box below. I would love to hear from you if you use any of these activities in your own classroom. How do you use them? Have you found success? Anything I should try with my students?
