African American Read In

In honor of Black History Month, Bon Air hosted guests in our building (rescheduled to March because of a two hour delay at the end of February) who read stories by African American authors to all of our classrooms. Many of our guest readers shared their connections and personal lives with the students before reading their picture books.

 

 

 

 

 

Animoto

Animoto (available on the web or as an Android app) gives teachers even in the youngest grades the ability to introduce digital storytelling into their classrooms. According to Discovery Education, "Animoto is one of the marvels of Web 2.0. It is a wonderful initiative and a true benefit for teachers and students." Animoto allows users to create stunning cinematic slideshows using photos, text, animations, video clips, and audio for free (up to 30 seconds).

Mrs. Miller's first grade class used their KUNO device to take photos of areas around their classroom. They then made presentations including simple sentences to introduce viewers to some of their favorite places around their room. Check out the photos below taken as they were editing their videos. Also click on the Animoto presentation to see a sample video.





Check out our videos from our Bon Air first graders!

Ways you could use Animoto in your classroom:

• Make a book trailer for a book report
• Student portfolios
• Make a visual dictionary of vocabulary words
• Introduction videos
• Show how to solve a math problem step by step
• Document a science experiment

Student Treasures Online Publishing

Every year classrooms at Bon Air participate in the Student Treasures Publishing project. Student Treasures is a company that promotes literacy skills by inspiring students to create their own free published story free of charge! Students write and illustrate their books using publishing kits or using the online database. After submission, each child recieves a hard bound version of the story they created.....for FREE!

This program motivates young students about writing, encourage students to use the writing process to create their own piece of work, and challenges students to use creativity and imagination in their stories. Their own copy of their book also provides them with a piece of work they can be proud to showcase with their family and friends. Student Treasures was recently named the "Best Free Program for Schools,"  by Scholastic's Instructor Magazine.

Check out their website at www.studenttreasures.com.

This year some classes chose to participate using the manuscript kits. Manuscript kits allow students to draw their illustrations and write their stories in their own handwriting. The fourth and fifth grade students used the new online publishing program. The kids typed their stories directly into the publishing program. For their illustrations they used Bloggie cameras to capture photographs around the school and browsed Google Images for clipart off the web.

We are anxious to get our books back soon! We hope you will come check out our books at the Young Author's Conference March 22nd at Indiana University Kokomo from 6:00-8:00.

These are the topics we wrote about this year!
The A to Z of Fourth Grade
My Memories of Elementary School
Lego Alphabet Book
All About Me Autobiographies
Animals

 

 

 Downloading pictures off the Bloggie camera

 

 

 What the online data base looks like up close

 

 The online program also allows teachers to provide comments and feedback and message the student back and forth with suggestions.