Last fall, I entered a blog contest through Sopris Learning. I submitted a blog--an open letter to my new teacher self--for the contest. Well, to be honest, after I submitted it, life got crazy busy and I kind of forgot about it. Woopsies.
Well, about a month ago I was contacted by Sopris Learning that I indeed had won their blog contest and that I'd be now a monthly blogger on their blog! Woo hoo! This was such awesome news and I was so excited that I would be getting to blog "professionally" for Sopris Learning. This made me a very happy gal, cause if you've been following me on this blog for the past few years, you know I love to write--so this gig seemed perfect for me.
Anyways, if you'd like to read my winning blog post, click on the link below. I am honored to be a blogger for Sopris Learning!
Monday, February 24, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Mobile Journalism
One of our recent projects in tech has been to partner with Mr. Grossman from the high school tech department and do a mobile journalism unit.
First, before we did anything, we went over what it mobile journalism is, interview techniques, filming techniques, and much more. Obviously this was our first go-around with mobile journalism so we weren't going to be perfect, but we sure wanted to try and be as close to perfect as we could. We spent a lot of time on the MRH High School YouTube channel watching mobile journalism pieces the high school students have done and the techniques and methods they used to do these.
My tech students then partnered up and began brainstorming about possible stories they would want to report on. They thought about upcoming expeditions, class projects, sports, and other MRHMS events.
Each group decided upon one topic to report on: Club Day, MRHMS Boys' Basketball, Whole Foods Health Expedition, and MRH Pianos.
Students then set out with their partner to storyboard their story. They used the template below to map out what they were going to do, questions they were going to ask, shots they were going to get, and everyone's role.
Students had about a week and a half in tech class to get their piece set up, storyboarded, filmed, stock footage captured, and edited together using iMovie (either on their Mac or iPad). Overall, I was really happy with the outcome of these movies! Check out a few of the final products below. For our first go with mobile journalism, I think these turned out awesome. I'm anxious to see how future mojo projects turn out as well!
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
19th Century Reform Movement Posters
Recently in social studies we've been looking at various reform movements of the 19th century. Our friend John Green from Crash Course gave us a really nice introduction to these reform movements before we dove into our chapter in History Alive! about the movements we would specifically look at.
We focused our lens on 5 particular reform movements of the 1800s: prison reform, education reform, women's rights, abolition movement, and the spirit of reform. After we spent some time in class reading about these and doing a few activities with them, the students picked out of a hat one of these five reform movement that they'd focus on for their poster research project.
Using the directions below (or here), students set out to create a detailed poster on their reform movement. We had spent some time looking at past posters that were advocating for a particular movement so students could get an idea of what a good poster looked like (although theirs would have more words and text on it, since I was requiring them to include more than most posters include :).
We focused our lens on 5 particular reform movements of the 1800s: prison reform, education reform, women's rights, abolition movement, and the spirit of reform. After we spent some time in class reading about these and doing a few activities with them, the students picked out of a hat one of these five reform movement that they'd focus on for their poster research project.
Using the directions below (or here), students set out to create a detailed poster on their reform movement. We had spent some time looking at past posters that were advocating for a particular movement so students could get an idea of what a good poster looked like (although theirs would have more words and text on it, since I was requiring them to include more than most posters include :).
Directions: Using your Lesson 17 reading and notes, create a poster (using Pages, Google Drawing, Keynote, Prezi, Glogster, or another app) that includes ALL of the following requirements about the 19th century reform movement you’ve been given.
Your Poster MUST INCLUDE:
- What your reform movement is (title)
- When your reform movement took place (date)
- What your reform movement did, and the impact it had
- At least 2 people who supported your movement
- At least 2 pictures
- At least 2 things that your reform movement did well
- At least 2 things that your reform movement could have improved upon
- Your reform movement’s legacy (what impact did it leave on the US?)
- How your reform movement has impacted TODAY’s society (you need a specific example for this one...you may need to do some outside research!)
- CREATIVE, ENGAGING, and INFORMATIVE!
What I really liked about this project is that students got to choose from a variety of mediums in which they could use to create their poster. One of my own professional goals this year is to give more student choice when it comes to demonstrating their knowledge and what they know; so I felt that this project really opened up some freedom to create a poster in various different formats--Glogster, Prezi, google docs, Keynote, Pages, Murally, etc...
Below are a few examples and links to the posters students created. Once again, I am super impressed with what the students created! They are so creative and really embraced the medium they picked to highlight their reform movement and detail all of the important information about it and the impact that it has had on today's world as well. Enjoy!
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