In February, students in Ms. Wines 2nd grade class at Charles Barrett investigated weather. Students identified common storms such as thunderstorms, blizzards and tornadoes; then wrote weather reports that reflected their understanding. Using an app called Green Screen, students recorded themselves as meteorologists in the storm! They smashed their Green Screen video into iMovie, adding ‘news’ theme music and ‘news’ captions.
Author: Mrs. Walsh
TLP 2016-2017
March TLP Session
On March 3rd, teachers part of the 2015-2016 cohort of the Teacher Leadership Program, met at George Washington Middle School to share ideas about technology integration and how they are implementing technology at their schools. Brianna Becker, Amy Leslie and Rosetta Stewart from Matthew Maury Elementary presented on a web based tool called EdPuzzle. EdPuzzle is used in conjunction with videos to provide students with interactive lessons that can include questions and teacher voice. Lessons are self paced for each individual student. Laura Murphy and Pei Wing from Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy presented a cross grade level lesson with 1st and 5th graders. It included integrating iMovie into explanations 
about Ancient Civilizations. 5th grade students taught the 1st graders content about the civilizations and how to use iMovie! Laura Zybrick, 3rd grade teacher from Lyles-Crouch also presented about Google Classroom. She demonstrated the ease of use students encounter when they use Google Classroom, specifically when they click on embedded links. For more information about TLP, please see your building Technology Integration Specialist.
Book Reviews!
Students in Ms. Mull’s 1st grade reading class recorded each other using the iPad talking about a book they had recently read. They used an outline graphic organizer that contained key components they were suppose to include in their review such as: title, setting, characters, and problem. In the end, students could recommend the book and describe how many ‘stars’ they would give it! As a bonus, students took their video and placed it in iMovie where they could add background music to their book review. Students enjoyed reviewing books, listening to themselves on a video, listening to their friends reviews and adding music!
Nonfiction Readers!
Students in Ms. Fisher’s 3rd grade class at George Mason spent time reading and exploring nonfiction texts. They discovered headings in nonfiction text contain key words that give a preview of main ideas they may read about in a section! 3rd graders learned nonfiction texts contain certain features they won’t usually find in fiction books such as: a table of contents, glossary, bold words, and headers. Students read their nonfiction texts, then created a shadow puppet using an iPad explaining main ideas of a section in their book.
Fraction E-Books!
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t George Mason Elementary, students in Mrs. Dean’s 1st grade class demonstrated their understanding of fractions by creating e-books. After a brief introduction of the app Book Creator, students were given the opportunity to work on pages of their books explaining different types of fractions and what the fractions represented. Book Creator then gave them the opportunity to download the book as a PDF, or save it as a movie with them discussing elements of fractions. Students then took their e-book ‘movie’ and added light background music in the app iMovie.