Meet the Designers

Every classroom should provide opportunities for students to pursue their passions and interests. So far this year, we've seen students write and illustrate children's books, compose original music, create podcasts, explore drawing and sketching, and try their hand at game design. Not all of these pursuits resonate with every single student, but every student has found something outside of the regular curriculum that has held their interest for a significant period of time. When students have free time, they can usually be observed returning to their interest and exploring it in greater depth.

In this video, Jerry and Henry talk about some games they have designed and the games they hope to work on in the future. Game design is a complex effort that involves visual aesthetics, story creation, character development, and an understanding of the variables that govern play. It's obviously an area of intense interest for them that will hopefully lead to a pursuit of subjects such as math and physics that are necessary to understand game design on a higher level. They're off to a good start.

Some other students are pursuing games that involve math concepts that they are studying. Hailey is working on a game in which the main character is pursued by a variety of fractions. If the fraction is in simplest form, it won't hurt you, but if it needs simplifying, watch out...

A Most Remarkable [Normal] Morning

Most of my observations of Mr. Mitchell's classroom occur on Friday afternoons. As you may have gathered from this blog, those afternoons are usually devoted to exploring new topics, apps, or projects. I thought it might be interesting to showcase a normal morning so that followers of this blog could see what the rest of the day might look like. As you'll see, what's normal in Mr. Mitchell's class is hardly normal for most 5th grade classrooms.

The video below was taken on Monday, October 24. There was nothing special about the schedule or the activities. I wanted to document how the students went about their routine of getting down to work. Mr. Mitchell gave me a quick interview just before the students arrived, which I used as the main narrative for the video. I was immediately struck by the fact that there were no verbal directions given to the students when they arrived at 9:00. They went directly to the class blog, read the instructions, and got to work. They figured out what they needed to do, figured out how to share learning resources between partners, and worked until they left for gym at 10:00. During that time, they completed several assignments and emailed the results to Mr. Mitchell, who evaluated them as he received them. By 10:00am, all of the assignments--audio recordings of spelling and vocabulary words, grammar and usage worksheets, and spelling/vocabulary exercises--had been turned in and evaluated.

Several students started in on other projects--math practice using IXL.com, Accelerated Reader exercises, reading their personal books (always encouraged), and others--as they finished the assignments. All were productively engaged for the entire hour.

Here are the directions give the students, directly from the blog:

Make a plan so that both members of your group complete the following assignments by 10:00.

1. Using AudioMemos, read/record your spelling words, and vocabulary words with definitions
2. Complete today's Grammar10b and Spelling10b (Adobe Ideas and Email)
3. Write (paper and pencil) your Spelling Words 1 time, Vocabulary and Definitions 2 times

That's it. The rest was up up to the students

"Make a plan" is a powerful way to begin a lesson. These students are learning to take control of their own learning. They're not waiting to be told what to do or how to do it. Feedback is immediate and corrections can be made as soon as they are noticed. As Mr. Mitchell says, that's the real world.

Author! Author!

The students in Mr. Mitchell's class have kindergarten reading buddies. They thought it would be a good idea to create their own stories to share using their iPads, and the eStorybook project was born. The students used Adobe Ideas or Drawing Box for the illustrations, Keynote to create the pages and add text, and eBook Creator to record their own voices and save the projects as eBooks that could be read and listened to on the iPad. We're very pleased with the initial results, and we hope you like them too.

In this post, three pairs of authors discuss their stories and show you how they were created. We're including the ebooks they created so that you can download them and read them yourselves. To read them, you'll need to have eBook Creator installed on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. You can download it here. It's unfortunately no longer free, and we're searching for ways to create new ebooks that can be read by more folks and can be recorded as movies so that we can publish them in the blog.

Enjoy, and look for more books in the next few weeks.

The Candy Town Mystery
Princess Bubblegum is missing from her castle. Can the folks of Candy Town save her? Karli and Maddy discuss their ebook and show you how it was created.



Download The Candy Town Mystery. For now, you'll need eBook Creator on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch to read it.

Jack and Alice
Jack is a giraffe. Alice is an elephant. Can they be friends? Izzy and Makennah discuss their ebook and how it was created.



Download Jack and Alice. For now, you'll need eBook Creator on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch to read it.

Princess Orange Blossom
Queen Lemon Lime is sick, and she needs help. Orange Blossom and the other gummy bears need to help her. Hailey and Addy discuss their ebook andy how they made it using their iPads.



Download Princess Orange Blossom. For now, you'll need eBook Creator on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch to read it.