This week, the 3rd grade class started the final unit of the year... sort of... Our final unit will be studying Mars! This unit will include creative and persuasive writing, the engineering design process, and research skills. The students' first task will be compiling research to compare and contrast Mars and Earth. They will be creating a slideshow to showcase their research, so we started the unit today by learning about slideshow faux pas. The student and I co-created a list of slideshow faux pas such as too much text on the page, pixilated images, and hard-to-read fonts. Then, in the spirit of getting them all out of their system, each student created a faux pas laden slideshow about a topic of their choice. 

The success criteria for today's project were to include at least 5 faux pas in the presentation, present on a topic you are already familiar with, and keep the presentation at 4-8 slides long. After creating some truly atrocious slideshows (and learning how to create a slide show for about half of the students,) the 3rd graders shared their work with a classmate or two who had to identify the faux pas and evaluate the success criteria. We were absolutely cracking up!

Next week, we will work on safe online research practices, quality note-taking skills, and faux-pas-free presentations.

It was so lovely to meet our FIVE new students today. Please reach out with any questions that might have arisen after today's class.