|
|
Maker Mat & Choice BoardIn celebration of all birthdays in all times of the year, I thought I would put together some fun STEAM activities! Whether it be a Maker Mat, a Choice Board, and a pixel art activity, any (or all!) can easily be integrated for some student creativity and critical thinking.
Pixel Art Review
4 Comments
Recently, I watched Disney/Pixar's latest movie, Soul, with my family. It was such a cute movie that made you think deeper about yourself. I loved how it talked about finding purpose and how your purpose doesn't matter much if you don't find the time to live while pursuing it. Such a great message for kiddos about how they can be something bigger than themselves through their personality, purpose, and living life as your best self.
As I was watching the movie and seeing how my own kiddos were drawn into the story, I thought it would be a great theme motivator for digital activities. Although 2020 may be coming to a close, we still aren't in the clear and distance learning is still part of our reality. I love when I can put a spin on something that students are interested in to draw them into the learning. I put together some of my favorite types of activities below using Soul as the theme. Feel free to use (if you share, please give credit)! How about we start out with a Google Slide as a welcome agenda? Google Jamboard Warm Up
Why not start a day/lesson off with a little warm up? I love using Google Jamboard for activities like this where I want students to think creatively. With this prompt, students are to place themselves in the shoes of Joe and think about what he might be writing on the board to share with his students. Simply have students add text or a sticky note, and you can start collecting responses!
Pixel Art Review
To say I have been a bit obsessed with pixel art lately would be an understatement. I love pairing the pixel art concept with Google Sheets to make interactive review/question and answer type sheets. Possibly just a glorified worksheet, but it engages students and self-checks along the way. It can open up communication among students when they reach a question/problem that they are having difficulty with, as it provides instant feedback on if the answer is correct or not. These type of activities could be great for students to be paired up online and complete together.
Below are two different links - one to the blank template and one to an example of content inserted (using multiplication facts). Choice Board
For the online version, I created a digital Maker Mat using digital building blocks. Students can select any of the bricks and copy and paste them to make new bricks. This is a great way for students to practice keyboard shortcuts, manipulating objects, and being creative.
SPARK (Bingo) Game Boards
Let's be honest, we all have one of those games we play on our phone that is a bit of a guilty addiction. I will admit, I have played Disney Emoji Blitz for longer than I would like to admit. ;)
With the release of the movie, the game had a special event in which you can earn characters and keyboard items. So why not a fun, bingo (let's call it SPARK as this is Soul-themed after all) game! I created this game using flippity.net, as they have an easy bingo template that works with Google Slides. If you click on the button below for the "Online SPARK Boards," you not only have the option to print boards, but you can also have students access an online bingo board as well as a wheel to spin for the teacher (under the "Play" tab). Some ways to use this SPARK board:
These are just some ideas for how I might use the theme of the movie to get started with some STEAM/EdTechy activities for students. But really, the possibilities are endless? How would you integrate the movie/theme of the movie into your curriculum?
I guess you could say this is a new twist on an old thing. Previously, I had shared winter-themed task cards. They were ones I had used with students when we were building with LEGOs for a STEAM activity. To be honest though, sometimes I like task cards and sometimes I like Maker Mats. It depends on how I am running the activity, what is available for building, and how students are collaborating together. As I had volunteered to provide an activity for my son's holiday party before break, I thought I would send my Winter Maker Mat and some pipe cleaners for students to create. As many of the maker mats I create are targeted towards an elementary audience with English Language Learners and other special populations, I try to incorporate an English version, a Spanish version, and one with both English and Spanish as well as pictures on all. I want to make sure the activity is accessible to all learnings. The great thing is that in my experience, students rarely recreate the picture as is when they are creating! They use their creativity to take their background knowledge and design something new and amazing!
 I have to admit, Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the snow, the lights, and the overall feeling of the season. Also, let's not forget about the movies. I could binge every Christmas movie over and over. Especially some of the classics, which definitely includes Home Alone for me! And when I learned that there was a picture book to go along with the story, I knew it was a choice board in the making! I know when people think of Home Alone, the first thing that comes to mind for many is the traps at the end of the movie. As I was watching the movie this year, I realized there are so many other STEAM/Maker connections that can be made throughout the story. I love to connect STEAM activities to a story for deeper meaning, but I have to admit that this choice board is a hybrid between the movie and the book. The cardboard cutout references the house party scene in the movie, the salt distributor references Mr. Marley and his trash can and shovel in the movie, and the tool to carry bags references when Kevin goes grocery shopping and the bags break on the way home. I felt they presented some great opportunities for critical thinking and problem solving! Estimating a Timeline This is one one of the activities on the choice board, but I wanted to highlight this one as it could also be a stand alone activity. One of the things that always stuck with me in the movie was how long it might have taken to set up the traps. Kevin must have had some serious creativity and critical thinking skills to make this all happen in a timely fashion. Using the provided template, students are supposed to work backward from when the burglars are supposed to arrive and estimate how long it would have have taken to set up each trap. This will definitely spark some conversation about how long it would take to collect the resources needed and then to set up the trap. Afterwards, students can compare and graph results as a class and determine the most reasonable time for when Kevin would have had to leave church to set up the traps in time before 9:00pm. Note: This spreadsheet is set up so that students only have to enter information in the yellow cells. The focus should be on problem solving the logistics, and not determining Google Sheet calculations. If you would like to take it one step further, students could delete the existing calculations and create their own.  I am not sure about you, but I am a HUGE fan of the television show The Office. I could watch season after season on repeat and still laugh, cringe, and tear up at moments. So when I heard that there was a picture book that was about The Office, I was all about it! I am all about a good picture book, and this one was definitely at the top of my list! It takes the characters, personalities, and icons from the show and puts them into an elementary classroom setting. I mean, Michael as the Line Leader and Dwight as the Assistant to the Line Leader?! :) Obviously, I wanted to do something STEAM-related with the book. I instantly came up with the idea for creating a digital cubicle space. This would be a great way for students to share their personalities, build relationships, and gain insight that can be used for building a culturally responsive classroom. As I started building a template, I knew I couldn't stop there - there were too many engineering opportunities that the story provided. A choice board was born!
Back in the spring, right before our schools shut down for face to face learning, I was in the middle of my STEAM Minecraft unit. We were focusing on Computational Thinking and how we can use it to help us solve problems we might have - whether it is troubleshooting or the actual content. The theme idea came from the students (so it was a Culturally Responsive Teaching approach), so I used that drive the content. The students were so engaged! They had to know more, visit each station, and probably would have stayed all day if I let them.
This fall has presented us with different challenges with teaching and learning. This was a unit I designed and the kids absolutely loved. I knew I needed to find a way to make this happen in a virtual or socially distanced setting. As much as I would have loved to completely replicate this unit skill for skill, I wasn't quite able to the way I wanted. Although that part was a bit of a bummer, it also allowed me to stretch myself a bit and try new and different things. My hope is that this digital/virtual version of my Minecraft until will allow teachers to insert their content into a station if desired. This content can be whatever is relevant to whatever you are teaching now (or planning for the future)!
Below I am including preview of the resources, but also links where you can make copies of the files and make it your own! Minecraft Virtual Classroom
Most of the station square links in the presentation will open a new Google Slide presentation. A few of the station square links (Station 1, Station 2, and Station 7) will force students to make a copy of an existing Google Slide presentation (Station 2 will force a copy of a Google Sheet). This is because to complete those particular stations, students will need a copy of the full presentation to manipulate different components.
 That is a wrap on our Digital Citizenship Shark Week (even though it was actually two weeks long)! I have to say, I am so glad that I poured a lot of my creativity into this unit and made Digital Citizenship something that students will connect with a fun theme. I absolutely love the Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship Curriculum, but I knew deep down that the simplicity of the presentation would not be something that would engage my students. This is not about students needing to be entertained 24/7, it is about presenting content in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them. Sharks were definitely the way to go! We were able to read several stories with sharks, connect them to our content, and even work in STEAM and Computer Science concepts into our activities. It was so much more than sharks and Digital Citizenship - it was a culturally responsive approach to teaching! For our last day, we had our second Fun Friday choice board. I offered Nitro Type and STEAM websites again, but had seven new options for them to choose from. Be Internet Awesome has become a quick favorite among students. It is always interesting to me to see where students gravitate towards and their unique personalities that come out when they are given choice. This school year is so different that what they have experienced in the past and although we are distanced, masked, and not able to share resources, we can still find different ways to learn and have fun along the way. Is absolutely exhausting for the teacher? 100%! It is also 100% worth it to see the ah-ha moments and excitement among students!
 Whew! We made it through our first week of our Digital Citizenship Shark Week! I am so happy that I designed this unit the way that I did for the two week Specials rotations we have at school. This will get each class started off with the same important information about digital citizenship, but it also works in so many STEAM elements. I am breaking up the digital citizenship lessons with a STEAM lesson in between. This has really helped the students stay engaged in the digital citizenship lessons as they know there are STEAM activities worked into those lessons as well as the lesson for the next day. So why not celebrate with a little Fun Friday?! This is where we put what we learned about personal and private information into practice by signing up for a Nitro Type account. We learned how to sign into an online service using our Google account, and then created our public racing name. We talked about how we don't want to use any private information for this name, as others will see it. After we did some racing, I mean typing practice, I gave them a Fun Friday Choice Board that had other shark and digital citizenship activities they could choose from. I was surprised at how many students simply wanted to keep on working on Nitro Type! It was fun as we learned how to add each other as friends and race against one another. Of course, they all wanted to race me and see if they could beat the teacher! They learned quickly that they need to practice some more, but will definitely be challenging me in the future. It was definitely a great way to spend our Friday as teaching and learning is absolutely draining on everyone right now - teachers and students!
This week we started back in person with students, so I thought I would start with something I feel is important for all students - Digital Citizenship! I feel that this is more important than ever as we are spending a large part of our day on the computer (even if we are in-person) and it is super important for students to recognize inappropriate online behavior and how to work towards addressing it.
As important as this topic is, I completely understand that it is not the most exciting topic for students. You can picture it now, in fact, almost HEAR it, "I know, I know," "This is so boring!" and the list could go on and on. Soooo, I knew I had to "fun it up" a bit in order for it to really hit home and leave an impact. I took a suggestion from the student evaluation from Camp Legend this summer chose a theme of sharks. I figured it would be a perfect topic to weave digital citizenship in, a variety of STEAM activities, and even some Science. STEAM Activity
As Specials at my school started the same day as in-person learning, I didn't want to jump full into full-blown content first thing in the morning. I figured it was not in the best interest of anyone! ;) So instead, I chose to lead into our Shark Digital Citizenship unit with a STEAM activity that I knew would spark their interest as well as give me an opportunity to get to know students a bit better.
I created a choice board based on the book, Smart About Sharks. There were so many great facts and images in this book, that I knew it would be a perfect anchor text for our Choice Board. I was gifted this book by an amazing person in my PLN from my Shark Week Digital Citizenship Amazon Wish List and am so grateful that it made this learning activity come to life! Students were given the Choice Board and could choose any item as their starting point. I had brief descriptions and visuals on the front and more details on the back if anyone wanted more information. The students seemed to enjoy the activity and actually worked through the items pretty quickly. It is amazing the difference in their work when they are not in groups and constantly talking and sharing while they are building. It was one of the things I was hoping to observe as far as their natural collaboration and communication and what would happen when they were not in groups and the natural sharing and conversation was not one of the main parts of their learning. I learned many things today!
As we have several classes that are full remote for the year, I have also been working to not only have the materials our in-person students will need, but also those that can be used by our virtual students. I created a digital version of the print choice board and provided students with some digital LEGO pieces to build and design. I hope that my virtual students have just as much fun as the in-person students with being able to create and learn about sharks!
|
Like What You See? Show Me Some Love!Follow MeWould you like e-mail notifications? Enter your e-mail address below to subscribe.
Categories
All
Archives
June 2024
|
