Interactive Story Maps: Design, Maker and Legends with 3rd Grade

I am always looking for ways to combine design and maker activities with literature and reading. Each year the third grade classes read Native American legends as part of their literature studies. In the past we have collaborated on a project where students summarized the stories, found images that highlighted the story and recorded their summaries using iMovie. The project was a good one that introduced iMovie to the students and they worked in small groups which helped them develop collaboration skills. There were also challenges, sometimes students struggled to understand the stories, iMovie could be challenging on the iPads and there were concerns with the images students found when searching for Native American themes on Google. I was interested in rethinking this project and trying something new this year.

Over the summer I attended Project Zero Classroom at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and it was an amazing experience. During the week I participated in a session where we showed our understanding of a poem using art, music and movement. I was really inspired by this activity and was hoping to find a way to incorporate it into my projects this year. I also came across an amazing video on twitter where students created an interactive room. I thought what if we combined the ideas of sharing a piece of literature with movement, art, and music, with the idea of an interactive story map for the third grade Native American legends project.

The first step was having the students listen and read their Native American legend stories. In each class four students were assigned one story. We had the students read the stories and listen to audio recordings of the stories several times. The listening to the audio recording of the stories as well as reading them several times really helped with students understanding the stories. During the student’s literacy time they discussed and shared their understanding of the stories and talked about the characteristics and traits of legends. We then had students summarize their legend using a graphic organizer with four categories first, next, then and finally. Students worked on really thinking about what were the most important elements of the legend and summarizing the story in their own words.

For the next step students were assigned one section of their Native American legend. They each drew a picture of the most important event in their section of the legend. They were asked to really think about what was the essential event of their section and to spend time illustrating the story with their artwork and imagination.

Next: Introducing the Design and Maker elements of the Story Maps.

Geometry, Books and Second Grade

We have been looking for more ways to connect what we are doing in the library and technology time with what is happening the classrooms. The second grade classrooms were working on their geometry units in the classroom and we thought this would be a good way to introduce a great book, the Skitch app and the 3D printing software Tinkercad.

We started the project reading the awesome books City Shapes by Diana Murray. In the story a young girl walks through the city while a pigeon flies above both seeing shapes in the everyday sights of the city. We talked about and pointed out all the shapes we saw in the illustrations in the book.

Next we introduced the app Skitch that allows you to take a photograph and then draw on the picture and add text to the pictures. Students were paired up and went on a design hunt around the library. The goal was to find everyday objects in the library that were made up of the 3D shapes that they were learning about in their math lessons.

Then we introduced the students to the 3D design software Tinkercad. The program is a free website and a great introduction for students to designing with 3D objects. Students again worked in pairs to design everyday objects with 3D shapes.

The final step was to print their designs on the library 3D printers. The second grade teachers now have the designs in their classrooms and have them as examples of 3D shapes to use in future lessons!

Kindergarten Little Red Riding Hood Design Challenge

In kindergarten I like to do a design challenge around a fairy tale. During this challenge we talk about the elements of the story and I introduce students to the ideas of the design process including brainstorming, ideate and prototyping. This year we read the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

Each year I start with a fairy tale because most of my students have heard them before. I feel that this familiarity with the story helps them to move into the story mapping and the design challenge. Before I start the story I talk to the class about looking at the setting of the story and where the beginning, middle and end of the story takes place. Then we read the story together as a class. Next we map out the story. We drew where the beginning, middle and end of the story takes place. That is our first lesson time.

The next week I have the students recall and retell the story and we map the beginning, middle and end again on the whiteboard. Then I introduce the design challenge. I tell the students that Little Red wants to be able to continue to visit her grandmother’s house and it is our challenge to come up with a safer way for her to get from her house to her grandmother’s house. I pull out large maps of our story along with legos and keva blocks and students start building their ideas. Next we share out what they built, they included cars, boats, trains, ziplines and teleportation stations. As students are sharing I start to put their ideas into categories.

The next lesson we recall and retell the story again. Then I share what categories their ideas fit into. This year we had four categories vehicles, fences, bridges and traps. I decided to introduce the students to 3D printing for this project. We have two 3D printers in the library that are always going and the students are amazed by them whenever they are in the library. The students were placed in small groups with a teacher and were given one of the four categories to design a prototype that would help Little Red. Working with the 3D printing software Tinkercad, students (with the help of the teacher) designed and created 3D prototypes using different 3D shapes. They can up with some amazing ideas! Some were fences that had security cameras and lasers, traps that looked like grandma’s house to trick the wolf and a double decker taxi bus because Little Red can’t drive yet.

We then made a movie explaining the process that students went through and shared their final prototype designs at an all school assembly.