5th Grade: Mandalas and Our Personal Philosophies

The fifth graders created mandalas to share their personal philosophies with the world…or at least their immediate world. They had to think about their top five strengths from Science of Character.  They also created I Believe statements to tie into the design of their mandala.  The kids used iMovie and Green Screen to help pull everything together.

5th Grade: Color Poetry

Reflecting on life in a colorless world as we read The Giver, the kids realized the power in a color.  We thought about the personality of color, personified it.  The 5th graders each chose a color and wrote a poem.  The bext part of this assignment is that we collaborated with other GT 5th graders from our district.  We read each other’s poems and gave honest, constructive feedback to help make our poems stronger.  It was an awesome experience.

5th Grade: We Believe…

As part of our final philosophy project the kids used a word cloud app and green screen to share their top 5 characteristics and fifteen of their I BELIEVE statements. Here are a few of them.  You will see the rest on their finished Philosophy movies.  I hope you enjoy their beliefs about the world as much as I do.

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1st Grade: Animal Mash-Up

After studying animals native to Australia, the kids researched two animals and then created a new animal that mixed traits from their original two.  The kids created Thinglinks to share facts about their original animals and their invented animal.  Not all the kids were able to finish, but enjoy what we did accomplish. 

3rd Grade: All Things Brainy

In 3rd grade we have spent a lot of time studying our brains.  Here are our Thinglinks. You can see some of our many projects from our brain unit.
After dissecting sheep brains I asked the kids to create a QUICK video to share some of the things they learned about the anatomy of the brain.  3 weeks later here are their videos. Definitely NOT quick, but they enjoyed playing with Green Screen and did seem to learn a few things…if you can get through some of the silliness. 🙂

Kinder: We Love GT!

What a great time I have had with my kindergarteners this year!  They are a zany bunch that make me laugh every Friday.  I can’t wait until next year.  I know that they will be the highlight of my Monday mornings. Here are two videos from my cool kindergarteners.  You will see why my Fridays are such fun. Enjoy!

This one shares some of the new vocabulary we learned this year.  The kids used DoInk green screen to model the meaning of the words.In this video we see the fun we had in GT this year. You also get to hear what each of the kids enjoyed most.

2nd Grade: Bridges

The second graders have been studying and learning about bridges over the last several weeks.  As a culminating project each student chose one bridge to research and learn about.  They used PicCollage to place themselves on their famous bridge, imported their image into Thinglink and added tags with details about their bridge.  Students then wrote an I Am poem from the perspective of their bridge using Google Slides.  They added their poem to their Bridge Thinglink.  When you hover over the tag with their poem, click on the GOOGLE SLIDES in the right corner.  It will open a full size version of the poem so that you can read it.

2nd Grade: Biomimicry Commercials

After studying and learning about how inventors, engineers, and scientists are looking to nature for solutions to problems, the 2nd graders researched two animals and melded two adaptations to create their own invention.  They used DoInk Greenscreen to create a commercial advertising their product.  Enjoy!  I know I loved watching them write, practice, and create their commercials.  We have some budding advertisers in here. 

3rd Grade: Leonardo Da Vinci

In third grade we are focusing on learning what it means to be a thinker, specifically how to be a systems thinker.  What better thinker to study than Leonardo Da Vinci?  Below you will see the kids’ Thinglinks about following in the footsteps of this great thinker.

**Hover over the image and you will see different tags to click on and read about DaVinci.

**There are two SPECIAL TAGS.  One will say Adobe Voice, click on the link and you will learn about Da Vinci and Perspective.  The other will be about one of his inventions.  To see this Google Slideshow in full screen, click on the word Google Slides in the bottom right corner of their slide show.