Digital Stories: Holidays We Celebrate
Instructor(s): / Cheryl ArnettSunset Elementary School
Colorado USA
Rawya Shatila
Makassed Khalil Shehab School
Beirut, Lebanon
Lesson Title: / Digital Stories: Holidays We Celebrate
Grade Level(s): / Grade 1
Content Area(s): / Literacy, social studies and 21st Century Skills
Learning Context:
What is the context in which this lesson occurs in your curriculum? / Holidays we Celebrate is part of a series of learning activities the two teachers had their students participate in during the school year.
First grade students in classrooms on opposite sides of the globe shared ideas, experiences, and learning through the use of digital stories and Web 2.0 tools on the internet. One class of students was English speaking, the other students were English language learners.
Holidays we Celebrate provided students with an authentic audience for practicing reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. In addition, there were real world reasons to learn about culture, history and geography.
In addition to the goals for students, as educators we wanted to develop collaboration and communication between teachers to improve teaching with technology
Student Task Description
What real or simulated problem situation will students address? What useful product(s), event(s), or service(s) will students produce? What audience might benefit from the students’ work?(Write to a student audience)
How can we learn about the culture and history of students who live on the opposite side of the world? What can we tell students living in Lebanon or the US about our holidays like Eid or Thanksgiving that would help them understand more about us, our history and our culture?
Assessment Plan
What academic standards will be addressed in students’ products and performances? / What information will be used to provide feedback during the lesson? How will student progress be measured toward the selected standards? Create links to assessment tools or describe your feedback strategies here.
Colorado State Standards
1.1. aUse precise language to express ideas, opinions requests, and feelings
1.3. cParticipate courteously in conversations with peers, teachers, and members of the community
2.1Comprehending and fluently reading a variety of literary and informational texts are the beginning traits of readers
3.2Appropriate spelling, conventions, and grammar are applied when writing
National Educational Technology Standards for Students: Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. / The activities in this project, and the assessment of student work, were integrated into other core content learning in the classroom. (For example, reading,writing, spelling and other conventions of communication.)
Assessment of student project work was often through teacher observation or other informal assessment.
Lesson Procedure
What are the steps students must follow to complete the lesson? What directions must teachers follow? Where might technology add value to students’ or teachers’ work and/or make their work easier or more efficient?
Student Steps(write to a student audience) / Teacher Directions
(write to a teacher audience) / Technology To Be Used (What and How)(written to a teacher audience)
We are going to teach students in another country something about our history and our culture. We are going to do this by explaining one of our major holidays.
Students in Lebanon will explain how they celebrate Eid and what Eid tells us about their culture and history.
Students in the US will explain how they celebrate Thanksgiving and what Thanksgiving tells us about their culture and history. / Finding partner schools or educators who have the same educational goals and are interested in collaborative projects is a critical first step. / E-pals
Individually students read the four books assigned on Thanksgiving.
As a class brainstorm what we know about our holiday and its roots in our history.
As a class we will write a shared story about Thanksgiving.
. / Ongoing review of scripts and pictures to meet writing and communications standards.
Once we have a story each student will choose a sentence, and will draw a picture to illustrate their sentence. / Ongoing review of scripts and pictures to meet writing and communications standards.
Each student will record their sentence. So that we have a complete story of our holiday recorded. / Photo Story
Movie Maker
Students in each school use a wiki page or Blog to post their holiday story.
Use email to write pen pals and ask them view their holiday story, and provide comments / Create Wiki and Blog Spot to post and share studentwork. / Wiki Spaces
Blog Spot
Students view holiday stories, and use email to write their pen pals and tell them what they have learned about the holiday, and history. / Monitor activities on the Web sites for each of the classrooms involved in project
Share potential activities with teachers from other classrooms to determine how they fit the other teachers’ goals and if they could be replicated in their classrooms so students in different locations could collaborate.
Resources
What materials and other resources are needed for this lesson? List the curriculum, technology, and information resources the teacher and students will use to complete the lesson, including links to tutorials for software or process guides.
Curriculum:
Social studies texts / Technology:
ePals, Wikispaces, Blogger, Youtube, Photostory 3, Windows movie maker.
Other tools included Microsoft Auto Collage,Power Point,voki, e- book, voicethread, Wordle Word Clouds, Garageband, Skype and more.
The Colorado students also kept track of their work on individual handheld computers.
Teachers collaborated, shared ideas, resources and inspirations using a wiki, blog, twitter, and Facebook, as well as email. / InformationSources: / Other:
Microsoft Peer Coaching Program V4Session 3HANDOUT1