Fifth graders take charge of a tech-infused project

The problem:

A school community growing by leaps and bounds needing a reminder about our community's expected behaviors.

The solution:

Give the fifth graders an opportunity to share what they know about the expected behaviors by creating projects that will be shared with our kindergarten through fourth grade students and their teachers.

The fifth grade teachers and I have been busy planning this valuable, fun, productive, and tech-filled day.

We set the task before them:

They brainstormed expected behaviors:

~Examples of student ideas~

We showed an exemplar that we created:

We reviewed the criteria for success:

Slide 1: Exemplar

Slide 2: Exemplar

Slide 3: Exemplar

We reviewed these two guiding documents:

Full document 

Full document

We sent the off with these two documents, an iPad and a laptop:

The project could be fully completed on the iPads, but I think editing an Animoto and working on a Google Presentation are easier on a laptop,so the students did their planning on the guiding document, photographed and filmed on the iPads, and then started their Animoto on the iPads. After importing their photographs and movies, naming their video, and adding some basic text, the students switched to the laptops. The laptops were numerically aligned with the Animoto accounts for ease of transferring to the new device. 

We are in the thick of it:

We have one more work period tomorrow during which the students will review, edit, and finalize their project. Watching the students think critically and creatively throughout this process has been exciting to watch.  

The hallways were full of students conferring, organizing, and acting out their skits, while back in the classrooms, the students were reviewing what they had just filmed and photographed, assessing it's merit, and heading back out again. #coolbeans

Next steps:

 The students will watch the projects next week and complete a rubric and reflection. We're determining the best time for the projects to be shown to the other students, but I'll be sharing them here soon!