Last week I had the pleasure of spending time with the 5th grade Social Studies students as we learned about U.S. Presidents, Presidential Inaugurations, President-Elect Obama, etc. I created a SMART Notebook lesson (attempted to post it here, with no luck) about the President-Elect’s journey to the White House. We also visited the PBS site President for A Day.
One interesting side note, in all three classes not one student could tell me who the Vice President-Elect was, but 80% knew that Senator McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate was Sarah Palin. HMMMMMM, and who says that the press/media doesn’t influence us. OK, back to the original post.
We spoke about the Boston teacher who quit his job to walk across the country collecting comments from Americans about their hopes and dreams for the future of America. He will deliver his book to the President. We discussed how one person, or a group of people, can make a difference. From that, emerged an open discussion about how the students could voice their hopes and expectations to the new President. Since we knew that President-Elect Obama enjoys reading and had learned that he had written two books, they decided to create a book to send to the President. I gave them a few options of how we could achieve this goal and they decided to use MakeBelifsComix.com to create cartoons expressing their ideas (I had used this website last week at a different school to describe landmarks). And so this would not be just any book, it would be a book of comics, expressing issues they want the President to address. We would put each comic strip in a book, design a cover, etc. and send it to President Obama.
The students were very excited and motivated and spoke about some very important and relevant issues that will face the new President such as lowering taxes, saving the environment, ending starvation, ending the wars, etc. I was very impressed not only with the actual comic strips, but with the insights they demonstrated. Here are some links to a few of the comics created by these amazing students: Hopes for the Future, Hopes for Change with President Obama, To Bring Home the Troops, Recycling.
So this weekend I am creating the “Comics for President Obama” book! Each student will add his/her signature to their comic, a cover page will be chosen, I will then bring the book to Staples to have it professionally bound, before sending off to the White House! Onward to the Inauguration. ENJOY!
I came across this really cool application over at BigHugeLabs.com that allows you to add captions to your photos. I told you it was cool! I had snapped this photo of our duck, Leo, enjoying a cold snowy swim following a recent snow storm, and thought this would be a perfect lesson to reinforce and encourage creative writing with the 4th grade students. The idea was inspired by a fabulous Google Docs activity I learned about over at Twitter called PLN Snow in Six Words. Using the laptops we will have each student create a thought bubble describing what they believe Leo is thinking as he embarks on his winter swim. To expand on this idea we will then have students take their own winter pictures and add captions.
The SMARTBoard will be used to demonstrate how to use the application- it’s perfect when instructing the students while they use the laptops. I will also create a Notebook lesson importing all of the pictures to reinforce writing skills and to allow students to share. ENJOY!
