Embedded Files
ELA Standards: https://www.education.ne.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ELA-Standards-Approved-Draft_9.7.2021.pdf
Professional Group:
Nebraska: https://www.education.ne.gov/educatorprep/ncte/
National: https://ncte.org/
A few ideas on ways to show aspects of a story
Toontastic
Toontastic is such a fun app. It allows students to tell a story and act it out. They get to choose their characters and backgrounds and put the story together however they like.
3D Setting or Scene: I like the idea of tiny houses or blueprints as 3D printed. I also like to tie in what is happening in the world as well this is a cool idea of a real-world application.
Cardboard Automatas
Cardboard Automatas
Cardboard Automata: These simple machines can tell a great story. You can easily get lost in all the cool Automatas on YouTube. This is my automata and I chose to depict pollination.
Stop animation with Google Slides/ Power Point/ Keynote: How cool is this?! You can easily add a stop motion project to a language arts unit for all kinds of representations of the text.
A very scary thought but hear me out. Podcasting! You don't need a whole lot of technology to make this happen. Here is an example of a very loose podcast idea from years ago. This was done using Anchor for recording and an iPad. If you want to get more tech involved you can add in a good microphone give real guidelines and really hammer in the editing. These three minutes took a long time to do. Consider having them discuss their points of view, have a conversation as a character in the story, do a book review/ club, and interview each other as the expert. The cool part about this is you often get an unfiltered perspective of their thoughts.
Ideas From Amy Bebell: National Air and Space Museum: Teacher Innovator Institute 2023 Cohort
The Hunger Games - Make large maps on paper to represent the arena and the code drones or Spheros to navigate the course in a way that represents the events in the book.
Any book that describes natural settings (we did this with The Unnameables because it covered so many different ecosystems): Make 3D models or dioramas of ecosystems in the book. Identify different species that would live there, the climate, etc.
Call It Courage: Design and build an outdoor shelter using natural materials. This could go along with any book where a character has to survive in the wild with few resources!
The Martian: There are SO many here related to what plants need to survive non-earth environments, day/night cycles on earth and Mars, physics and history of space flight...
Tall Tales
Tall tales are one of my favorite things to do with fourth and fifth-grade students. We made a lasso out of plastic grocery sacks like Pecos Bill and we did a lot of measuring around Babe the Blue Ox. We even tried to make a scale model pen for him!
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