After our character units, we moved into nonfiction during the month of November and continue to work on this unit. Part of the Reader's Workshop unit included a class research project in which the class decided on a topic they were interested in. From there, students discussed and came up with the subtopics to be researched. My class was so interested in this project. Their topic was sharks and they came up with some great ideas for subtopics.
After researching and becoming experts on their subtopic, students added post-it notes of their learning to our class anchor chart so that we could share the information with one another. They also completed the Post-it Note Organizer that I found from Sarah's blog. Even though it was posted for a 1st grade class, it worked perfectly for our research project. Lastly, students chose begged to use the green screen app to create a video of their learning. Each partner chose the background picture for their recording and I recorded them sharing their expertise.
Students spent the month of October learning about characters in Reader's and Writer's Workshop. At the end of the unit in WW, students had to create a "Selfie" of the character they created to use in their Realistic Fiction stories. Once their selfie was finished, students video-taped one another describing how this character fits into their stories. We inserted these videos into Aurasma to create an augmented reality project. Students' selfies were placed in the hallway to be viewed by their parents during conferences.
During Reader's Workshop students studied all about characters, including how to become the character and see the character's world through his/her eyes. To wrap up this unit of study, students worked on an app-smashing project that included Chatterpix and Aurasma. They had to first pick which character they were going to "become" and create a script of what this character would say. Most students chose the main character while others chose minor characters within the text. Students created the dialogue using Chatterpix (very user friendly for the kiddos) and imported this into Aurasma. Their trigger image for this was the book cover. This also serves as a great tool to use for students that have not read the text to get an insider's view of what the book will be about.
