Graphic Design

The first project of the year will focus on graphic design - colors, shapes, lines, space, etc. This will help for the rest of the year in making everything you do look good. The graphic design unit is gamified which means the whole thing has been turned into a game. The Rainbow Princess has been kidnapped and all color has vanished. You must learn about graphic design and make your own portfolio of designs to rescue her and return color to the world. There are lots of opportunities to win prizes and play games all while learning!

Animate your Name using Scratch!

One of the projects this year will be to animate your name on Scratch. Go ahead and click here to see my name. Click on the different letters to see what they do and have your earbuds in. Then start your own! You can easily do this by yourself. Click on "Create" in Scratch and then go to the ? in the top right hand corner of the screen and there are all sorts of tips there. Scroll down to "Animate your Name" and it will lead you through some steps to help you animate your name.

Learn to use graphic design programs like Canva!

Making flyers, posters, info-graphics, banners, cards, etc. can now be easily done on fun web-based design programs. One of my personal favorites is Canva. Canva allows you to easily design anything you need. Most of the designs are free and you have lots of choices of colors, fonts, shapes and pictures. You can even upload your own stuff. This skill will come in really handy when its time to join Leadership or Student Council and you can help make the advertisements for events, dance tickets, and posters!

Create an Avatar with Bitmoji (or others!)

You see them all over my Google Site - little me's! The other name for them as I am sure you know are avatars. I like Bitmoji myself. It has a Chrome extension that allows you to attach it to your text messaging and gmail as well as really put them anywhere you want. I like to use them as a guide to not only this Google Site, but also Echo! You will have to build your own avatar for the Google Site project.

Make movies on iMovie and DoInk Green Screen!

Movie making at Sheppard have become more noticeable since we started doing Sheppard Weekly Announcements as a real broadcast. Learning about iMovie and DoInk will help you create your own! For our class this year, we will be making several movies - one will be a PSA about something related to digital citizenship. But movie making is strongly encouraged throughout the whole year. We are hoping to even have a film festival (with a red carpet and all!) at the end of the year.

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

We will be joining the Global Read Aloud this year by reading The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. We will be reading the novel in class and then collaborating with each other and students from around the world. We will also incorporate weekly STEAM projects and a postcard exchange with students from around the world!

We will begin reading this the week of October 2nd. You do not need to purchase a copy of the book, but if you wish to do so, here is a link to the book on Amazon.

• Amazon: The Wild Robot
• Making Roz
• Camouflaging Roz