Thursday, April 26, 2012

Canizales' Cuddly Bears Brainstorm about Butterflies




Mrs. Canizales' second grade students have been learning about the life cycle of butterflies.  Using Kidspiration, the students have created brainstorming maps of this cycle.  The students found images of each stage to enhance their ideas.  The students were writing short descriptions of each stage, using captions to support their understanding. We are very proud of these second graders!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Shogan's Salamanders Used TAGXEDO

Word Clouds aren't just useful, they're beautiful too.  Mrs. Shogan's 3rd grade students wrote 20 descriptive sentences about their mothers and pasted the text into www.tagxedo.com in order to create a custom gift for
Mother's Day.  The site is free and offers dozens of unique shapes for the word clouds along with the ability to save the artwork in several formats. The students enjoyed changing the the themes, fonts and shapes to create
this personal gift.

Coyotes Service Learning Club Learns about Commercials

The Service Learning Club is a group of fourth and fifth grade students who do community-focused activities throughout the year at Forest Creek Elementary.  One of the many activities they are involved with is the Empty Bowl Project, a fund raiser for the Round Rock food pantry.  People create empty bowls which are sold at a fund raiser; all proceeds benefit the Round Rock Area Serving Center.  The students wanted to advertise the event to the other students at Forest Creek, so they decided to create a commercial. The students researched what they wanted the commercial to say and wrote the script. The students filmed the commercial with teacher support.

During the course of this month long project, the students learned about writing to a specific audience and creating a focused message. They also learned about public speaking and memorized their parts. They learned about technology as they filmed and helped put together the project. We are very proud of these students and their finished project. We are hoping that this not only encourages people to come to the Empty Bowl Festival on Saturday, April 14th, but also inspires them to try a project-based learning experience also!  Please enjoy the commercial our students worked so hard on.  Click here if you would like to view the commercial on YouTube.

Heinzen's Honeybees Buzz about PhotoStory

Mrs. Heinzen's first grade students were researching animals. Rather than simply creating a book about their research, these Honeybees created a Photostory of their work and wrote it out to video.  The students had to decide what information was most important to include in their project, research their animal, write it up and illustrate it.  With help, they were able to get pictures of their work and they learned how to put it all together in a Photostory to make a moving book.  The students then narrated their book.  We are so proud of their project!  Way to go, Honeybees!  Please enjoy this sample of their work.

 http://youtu.be/ML8nG7sAs40

http://youtu.be/0kAX0q5_xXY

http://youtu.be/VBQblU8pP0s

http://youtu.be/tcndq65KW24

Fulp's Flashy Fish and Kelso's Critters Tackles Power Point!


Fulp's Flashy Fish and Kelso's Critters have both been doing research about animals. They wanted to present the information they have learned to each other.  They are learning about Power Point and how Power Point can be a great tool for presenting information in an interesting way.  The students are learning how much information should go on each slide and how to make that information look interesting.  The students are also learning that you have to have your content first before you can make it look pretty!  Having a good foundation in creating interesting and meaningful presentations will serve the students well as they continue throughout their educational and professional careers. Way to go, digital natives!