Using Popplet in Content Areas

I love integrating IT across the curriculum. I believe that it is important that the kids are able to apply 21st century IT skills both at school and at home rather than just "IT class". This year in Grade 4, the kids are more computer savvy. They come with a wealth of computer knowledge - appropriate to the grade level rather than last year where a lot of the first half of the year was dedicated to typing skills.

Having said that, the third graders were able to produce some green screen and common craft pieces towards the end of the year.

In Science, we have been regulated to the Scott Foresman series which I find particularly dry. We are learning about classifying plants. In Hong Kong, it is difficult to find certain species of common North American plants due to the climate of our country. I decided to use Popplet  as an activity to classify different plants. This also linked in nicely with our Reading Street comprehension skill, graphic sources.

First, I divided up my class into five groups. Each group was assigned a plant classification : vascular, non-vascular, spores, cones and seeds and flowering plans. Then, within each group, they paired up.
I told my students I was grading them on individual participation and on team work. This is the rubric I used.

In our school, we are aligned with the IB curriculum, so our rubrics are out a scale of 7. It easily adaptable. You can get it here.

Once the kids are logged in, they started working on their Popplets.  I went through a demonstration with the students. We talked about how the diagram should start from the relevant kingdom. In my demonstration, I chose to use animals, vertebrates and invertebrates.

The final product looked like this:

 This website can translate to pretty much anything and kids are super proud when they are done with it! So many reasons why students should use Popplet!

Week 2, What we have been up too...

Hi there friends! Its been a while since I last posted and I do apologise for that. The start up of the year is always a crazy time at The Academy, and I've pretty much lost a lot of sleep and grew a few grey hairs. Now that we have delved into the second week of school, it's good to see the school year starting to meld together.

This is my first year back in fourth grade after being in third for four years. I'm pretty excited as it means I have more teaching time in English and Science.

Our first back mainly consisted of back to school stuff, but I was really eager to get that past so I can get into the nitty gritty of teaching.

I'm definitely loving my new class this year. They are extraordinarily calm and insightful and its great going up a grade with them.

This week, we started off our Reading Street unit, Patterns of Nature. We only picked selected stories from each unit.

The kiddos read the selection in two lessons. Since our comprehension skill is fact and opinion, we did a lot of work on differentiating the two. Afterwards, we made a fact map about what we learnt on Grey Whales and listed the facts and opinions from the story.

If you would like a copy of the worksheet, you can download it here. 

In Science, we have started looking at cells and classification. We are also using the Scotts Foresman Science books which I find a bit dry. I managed to get the Senior School to allow us to use the video microscope to look at plant and animal cells.

The kiddos really enjoyed this as it was the first time they got to use a microscope.  I projected a sample of the onion cell and an animal cell on the board and the kids made some observations.

Before they started, we talked about using our five senses to make observations in Science. I posted an anchor chart on making observations to help them with their write-up.

I hope you are all have a good week at your schools! Happy Days!