Last year, I used Common Craft with my thirds with my Sadako unit. They had to make a common craft about her character. This year in fourth, we decided to use the same technique but they had to explain what they learnt in their Matter Unit. If you are not familiar with common craft, it is a form of movie making in which the story is told in a paper-slide video project.
Phase Changes by Austin Andrea Kleio from Constance Leung on Vimeo.
As you can see, this is a very low-tech way to do a video project. We also used the web based application Thinglink. Thinglink allows you to make your images interactive through putting different media on it such as sound clips, video clips, text, images, social media and website links.
We did an integrated unit on animal adaptations with writing an informational compare/contrast text on two animals - one real and one made up. As part of the digital integration, they used Paint to digitally draw their made up animal. We then used Thinglink to upload the image and the students attached different media explaining the different adaptations of their animals.
As the students become more digitally fluent through continuously using the same few applications for different extension exercises, students are able to show their learning through both traditional and digital mediums.
Currently, my students are working on Stop-Motion animations to wrap up their Heat Energy unit. I will upload a post in the next few days as I document my fourths navigating their way through both the planning process as well as learning how to use iMovie for voice-overs...
