For our last Digital Citizenship lesson, I wanted to end with one of the most important topics that all students should be aware of - cyberbullying. We read the story about Clark the Shark and talked about how certain characters in the story were up-standers or bystanders. I feel that students may not always understand that their actions are not always considered to be a "joke" and that they can truly hurt the feelings of others when they are online. We had some great discussions about bullying in person and cyberbullying online.
For our activity for this lesson, we connected the idea that Clark had in the book to make rhymes to remember things with what we know about being a good digital citizen as well as cyberbullying. We used the website Typatone to write rhymes that help us remember those things and turn them into music. This was way more impactful than I originally thought it would be! Students started writing poems and short stories about what we had learned and liked sharing it with their classmates. It was so much more than the novelty of putting in characters and hearing what they sounded like - there was so much meaning behind it!
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For our last STEAM activity for the Digital Citizenship Shark Week unit, I wanted to tap into their creative side as well as do something that would benefit a local non-profit, Kids' Food Basket. So, for our last STEAM activity, we decorated sack supper bags for Kids' Food Basket with a shark and Digital Citizenship theme! As this was at the end of our unit, I wanted to give students the opportunity to not only show what they know, but have an authentic audience for their work. Whenever I have done bag decorating, the biggest obstacle I run into is that students do not want to give up their bags when they are done. They have invested their time and talents into creating something that they are so proud of that they do not want to give it away. This is where I reminded them of our lesson where we spoke about empathy and how how our actions may affect (positively or negatively) others. In this case, it is an opportunity to have a positive impact! I felt that in our two week Special rotation, we had covered a lot of information and it might be hard to ask the students to recall from memory facts and information we had covered. I created a double-sided "cheat sheet" that had shark facts we learned about on one side and Digital Citizenship facts we learned about on the other side. It was a great way for students to connect facts with their own drawings to create something amazing! I created a couple of bags to show students different ways they could decorate their bags (front and back) as well as possible ways to incorporate the shark and Digital Citizenship facts.
For our third Digital Citizenship lesson, we explored Digital Literacy and Communication. I think out of all of the shark Digital Citizenship lessons that I taught, this one was probably my favorite. We started off with the story, How to Make a Shark Smile, and then discussed appropriate ways that we can interact (responding, sharing, working, and playing) with others when online. With all of our lessons, I have stressed that Digital Citizenship is being our best self at all times - online or offline.
The students were fascinated with the concept of altering images and trying to guess if an image or video was altered. Of the two media pieces I showed them (one picture and one video), the majority of students fully believed that the video was real. It was a great way to show them the concept of altering as it fit with our shark theme. It prompted great discussion and often heated arguments (as much as the built-in quiz/check-ins that I put in the presentation!). I love how animated the students became when they were fully engaged in the topic.
For our activity for this lesson, I introduced the concept of coding. We connected the characters with our story with our Digital Citizenship concepts to code a path from a starting point to an ending point. The kids thought this was super fun, enjoyed completing the scenarios I presented them as well as creating their own!
Our third STEAM activity once again had my students thinking like a scientist and engineer - but this time to learn more about Great White Sharks. Using the book, Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean's Most Fearless, I introduced the importance of wanting to learn more about something you are passionate about, regardless of what anyone may think. I combined that with some facts from Great White Sharks (Nature's Children) to set the stage for what scientists already know about Great White Sharks. After listening to the story, we jumped into our STEAM activity. Our challenge was to create something new and innovative that would help scientists learn more about Great White Sharks. I told the students that they could not simply copy something that they know is already available (like a tracker attached to a shark), but they could use it as their starting point and turn it into what I call "the 50 million dollar idea" (if I gave them 50 million dollars to make their idea even better, unique, and something that will help others, I would give them the money on the spot). They could use LEGOs or their computer for research and prototyping. They came up with some great ideas and are on their way to being scientists and engineers with big ideas and dreams! Well, even the best laid out plans can even result in a plan B, right? I am in my second rotation of STEAM classes right now and today was planned as Fun Friday #1, but....the Internet was out in my district. So that meant no typing and no online activities in our socially distanced classrooms with no shared materials. An hour of doing LEGOs sitting in a seat is not even my idea of a super fun time. Don't get me wrong, I like LEGOs, but it is Friday, warm, and then end of a long full week. I knew that wouldn't fly with myself or students. So, insert plan B. One of the things my own 3rd grade son had to do for one of his remote learning activities was teach someone how to draw something. So he showed me how to draw a beaker and then we got creative adding faces. It was fun to spend that time with him and learning from him! And it came in clutch this morning when I needed to scrap Fun Friday and come up with a non-digital activity without sharing anything. Hello directed drawing from last night! I put a little twist on the beaker drawing though - this was going to be our secret potion for turning someone into a shark (or Dakuwaqua like from our STEAM Activity #1 Choice Board!). The students came up with so many creative beakers - ones with bubbles, one with shark fins, and always a story to share about how it would turn someone into a shark! 😉 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!
Our second STEAM activity turned out to be even more interesting for students than I thought it would be! I shared with them that there are threats that sharks face every day in their daily lives of simply surviving (found in the book, Sharks: A 400 Million Year Journey). The students seemed so surprised as we had previously talked about how sharks are apex predators and there are not many other species that feed on them as prey. I introduced five (5) facts that sharks face - longlines, nets, shark finning, pollution, and habitat destruction. Some of these were new to students in that they hadn't thought they were something that affected sharks (nets, pollution, and habitat destruction) and some were new as they had not heard of them before (longlines and shark finning). I knew that the shark finning could potentially be a sensitive topic for students, but I was absolutely blow away by how seriously they took that particular threat to sharks and passionate about finding a solution to stopping it.
After discussing the different threats, I explained to the students that they would be working as scientists and engineers that day. We were going to use the Engineering Design Process to engineer a scientific solution to one of the threats that sharks face. I let each student choose the threat that they would like to explore further. They had opportunities to research more if they needed to, ask me any questions (we often researched together based on based on our conversations!), and have lots of creating, testing, improving, and sharing. We used LEGOs as our prototyping material (in the presentation I have digital Plus Plus blocks for my remote learners) and created so many cool things! Some of the solutions that students came up with:
Our second Digital Citizenship lesson was all about Safety and Security. We ready the story Friends Don't Eat Friends as our intro to our lesson. We determined that Shark did not actually eat Bob and that he was truly playing Hide and Go Seek at the end of Misunderstood Shark. For this lesson, I really wanted students to understand the difference between personal and private information and how some people will use clickbait to try and get people to click on links. Similar to that of our first lesson, much of the information I gathered was from Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship Curriculum and I put a shark spin on it.
As many of my students haven't used Google Slides or some of the tools beyond basic text and inserting an image, I felt this Shark Shapegram activity would give them an opportunity to see the different tools available in Google Slides as well as how they can combine shapes to make a design. I feel my students definitely had a productive struggle with this activity and I am all for that! I keep on reminding them that in STEAM class, we do hard things because when we do hard things, our brain grows. I think we had some big brains after this class!
Today we dove into Digital Citizenship fins first! Yesterday, everything was so new new and different to the students that I was so glad I decided to do the STEAM activity first before the lesson. Today we read the story Misunderstood Shark and all of the students loved it! I love it anytime I can include a book as part of a lesson. It gives everyone a common experience/storyline to build from.
Our first lesson in our Digital Citizenship unit was about Identity and Use. We talked about how it is important to be a good person online and offline and how our actions can influence those of others and even hurt someone else's digital footprint. Much of the information I gathered was from Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship Curriculum and I put a shark spin on it. I have to say, although I have been told that Digital Citizenship and sharks seems like an odd combination, it is working so far. Kids are actually engaged in the activities and it gives me a purpose in teaching them how to do things in Google Slides.
For the student activity today, I created digital LEGO pieces and students had to drag them into the workspace to "build" with them. I tasked them with designing a shark with the LEGO pieces, inserting a callout bubble, and then providing a piece of advice for being a good digital citizen in the callout bubble (they accessed this through Google Classroom so each student had a template to work from). There were so many new things that they had to do in this activity and everyone stepped up to the task! In 3rd grade we built our sharks out of physical LEGO pieces and then brainstormed pieces of advice and wrote them on the board because we were getting a little short on time. It worked out perfectly as a physical or digital activity!
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!
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