End of Year LEGO Stop-Motion Movies!

Let's face it, when we have two huge bins of LEGO pieces sitting around and access to some cool stop-motion technology, why would we NOT make some awesome stop-motion movies as part of our end-of-year thematic summaries?

But here's the thing: Each grade level was tasked with creating a stop-motion movie that related to our theme for the year. So 5th grade, for example, had to make their film relate to "encounters" between two civilizations or groups; 4th grade's movies had to center around a piece of architecture, and so on...

First we studied some "best practices" for making stop motion with LEGOs, including considering such factors as positioning, background, lighting, movements, etc. Students learned that making a quality stop motion is MUCH harder than they thought, and requires oodles of patience and concentration. That made it an even more important exercise!

At the link below you can access a folder with all the videos. File names are labelled by student first names. Enjoy!

NOTE: We used the app "LEGO Movie Maker" on the iPads. That app is not available on Android but there are other user-friendly stop-motion apps on the Android market.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2urbvFV8qF1c3lBaHNYNHNDR0k&usp=sharing

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5th Grade: Interactive Inklewriter Story Links!

Fifth graders spent all year building up an imaginary civilization attribute by attribute, from geography to mythology, from basic crops to language and number systems. There were thousands of possible ways to wrap up their study, but we went with a free online program called Inklewriter that allows students to create interactive, reader-driven stories. Their task was to create an interactive story full of reader options that told the story and details of their civilization indirectly along the way. I think you'll enjoy!

NOTE: Although I guided and consulted students as much as possible, they were responsible for their own editing, grammar-checking and link-testing. With our limited time each week, I chose to focus on the development of their ideas as opposed to the meticulousness of their writing.

Now have fun!

Ben W: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/g69x

Alex Z: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/nh3q

Annie T: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/jh3q

Jai G.     http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/dm3q

RYAN Y. http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/4dfz

Tom P: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/48wb

Chihchia Y. http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/xwn6

Kristen. http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/cb64

Jeffrey W. http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/3z82

Ava J.: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/zh3d

Anica: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/fghp

Emma R: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/qzd9

Siddhartha: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/q69x

Prisha: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/g8wb

Katherine: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/8pqf

Riya: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/f4xc

Elaine: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/5nd9

Adit: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/44xc

Santosh: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/wwn6

 Amelie: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/gghp

Neha: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/zmpd

Navya: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/cz82

 Kylie: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/bzgm

Ritvik: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/59j8

Marjan: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/9jgm

Tommy C.: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/mmpd

Divya: http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/2nqf

If your child's story does not appear here, then they did not finish in class and were asked to finish as homework and send me the link. It's not too late!

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Fourth Grade Movie Trailers: They're "Pentominal!"

As you know from last week's status update, our 4th graders have been focusing on the geometrical tool set known as pentominoes. They are a crucial part of the plot in our novel The Wright Three but we are taking them even further. Most recently, students created large, 3-D pentominoes which we've been using to create "rooms" and spaces within the classroom.

Last week, we created movie trailers that revolved around pentominoes in some way. They could be characters themselves or just somehow part of the plot. They are very entertaining. We may have some future filmmakers in our midst. :) Enjoy!

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January Update: A Busy Month Culminates in Applied Technology

I found myself with access to a stack of iPads this week and couldn't let the opportunity pass. I quickly updated my plans to incorporate a technology piece that was a perfect extension of the work and explorations we'd been doing at each grade level. Here, then, is a quick summary by grade level of what our January has been all about and then a note about how we used tech this week to enhance and extend our learning.

1st

We've transitioned into visual/spatial reasoning in January, which is a fancy way of saying we've been developing the problem-solving muscles in our brains that utilize visual information to find logical patterns in forms, shapes, colors, etc. We've used two classic geometrical tools to do this: tangrams and pentominoes. This week with the iPads we focused on 3 nice apps to apply these developing skills: Blockaders, Zentomino HD Lite and Zen HD Lite - Relaxing Tangrams. They are all free, find them for your devices!

Tangrams consist of 7 pieces

Pentominoes consist of 12 pieces of 5 sections each

2nd

2014 has been all about roller coasters! We started with some of the basic science, like how coasters get their speed and what "G force" is. Then we went into research mode and dug up some detailed information on famous coasters throughout the world. On the iPads this week, we found the perfect app to begin testing our own coaster engineering skills: Coaster Frenzy. Students have to design, test, and modify their track in order to increase speed and make the ride fun. There is also a wonderful creative aspect to designing a coaster that would be safe AND fun.

3rd

Using Benjamin Franklin's fascination with magic squares as a trigger, we've been playing around with "magic math," especially different types of magic squares. That led us over to a cousin of the magic square, sudoku, and all 3rd graders have now been formally introduced to that classic (and addictive) game. The apps we used this week were ProMagic Square and Sudoku 2. There are probably several thousand sudoku games out there, but this one was a hit for its easy interface.

4th

Well, pentominoes and more pentominoes! As you know, students created 3-D pentominoes at home using 5 6x6x6 inch cubes. We are using those in class for real-life architecture challenges, like the reading nooks we have lovingly called "pentominooks." This week with the iPads we stuck on the theme of pentominoes but with a special creative twist: students used the app iMovie to create movie trailers in which the characters, theme and title all centered around pentominoes in some way. I will share those soon in a separate post.

5th

OK, 5th is the one grade that didn't indulge much in the iPads. We've been busy, though. In January we kicked off a long-term unit on Mindset--a way of framing and perceiving the world and yourself for long-term success and growth. At the same time, we are continuing with our civilization projects. Most recently, students designed (with elaborate detail) the fictional fruits that are the basis of their civilizations. We got some inspiration for our fruit creations from a documentary called Fruit Hunters. We only saw the trailer in class, but Mr. Koch has seen the whole thing and recommends it (Netflix)! :)

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