Flat Stanley Aventure Story

A short time ago I posted about creating Choose Your Own Adventure stories using Google Slides, you can view that here. It is such a simple project, but one that is so engaging and fun for students.

After introducing this to some of my colleagues, one teacher asked if we could do the same style of writing for a Flat Stanley project he was completing, if you haven't heard about it you can find out more information here: Flat Stanley Official Project information

We followed the same template as we had before for a choose your own adventure, except this time we themed it for the Flat Stanley Project. Below is a copy of the planning Popplet I created for my own story, and the final version of my Flat Stanley story. You may notice in the planning document that I kept the numbers in each planning bubble the same as the slide number that information is on in the slide deck. This is important as it helps students when they are linking their files.

This was a great project, and a different way for our students to teach someone else about our home of Singapore.

Send out a template file to your class
 Click this link to make a copy of the template file I send out to students. Clicking on this link will create a copy of the document. You can copy and paste this link if you want to share it directly with your students.

The ABC's of Anything - Handy book template for any classroom

I was recently working with a class that was making ABC books, and decided to try and pimp out a Google Slide deck for the job. I'm really happy with the results, particularly the hyperlinked letters around the edge so you can jump to any letter, and the design overall.

Uses for this slide deck could include:

• Unit summaries for any subject
• Classroom guidelines
• Character analysis for literature
• Second language instruction or with English as a second language learners.
• Make a classroom book where each person is responsible for one letter

Click here to make a copy of the slide deck for your own use.

Choose Your Own Adventure stories - How to engage reluctant writers (Pick a path)

I remember reading Choose Your Own Adventure books a lot as a child, in particular the "Your Very Own Robot". I'm sure I read through that book 20-30 times, choosing a different path each time. For that reason I have always liked the idea of giving my students the chance to create their own Choose Your Own Adventure stories using hyperlinks.

Using Google Slides on the iPad or Browser
There are a few ways to do this, but the best way I have found is using Google Slides. It's simple, free and platform agnostic.

Below is an example of a story I wrote myself. The last 3 slides have the planning documents that I use with the students.





Send out a template file to your class
 Click this link to make a copy of the template file I send out to students. Clicking on this link will create a copy of the document. You can copy and paste this link if you want to share it directly with your students.

Planning - The most important step!
Planning out how the story flows is very important when you do this for the first time. I use Popplet with the students, but you could simply use a piece of paper. If you look at the image below I number each step so that it is the same as the slide number in the presentation slide deck. It's important that students can see how the story flows and which step links to the next.

Adding the links on the iPad

Adding links in a browser

Once you have highlighted the text, right click and then click on link. In the link pop up you can choose "Slides from this presentation instead" and click on the slide you want to link to.

Another reason that I like this option for creating choose your own adventure stories is that Google Slides embed very nicely into student blogs, and as I mentioned at the start, are platform agnostic so you can read them on any device.

Using hyperlinks is an important skill for students to understand and this project is a great way to teach students how to use them and gives them some starting ideas on how they can be used.

Intro to using Google maps and saving places

I recently helped one of my grade 2 teachers use Google maps to show where all of the kids in her class were from. Following are the instructions for creating and saving a map in google maps, adding locations, and then sharing the map with parents or on your blog. You can click on an individual picture to enlarge it.

Uses in the classroom:

• Mapping items of significance during social studies.
• Making a history tour, i.e. the location of Egyptian sites like the pyramids, Luxor, Valley of the Kings etc.
• Have children label each continent.
• Track famous journeys such as the voyages of Columbus, Cook, Vasco Nunez etc.
• Sharing locations of relatives, holidays, visiting authors and the like.
• The ideas are only limited to your imagination

In the coming week I will add a post to describe how to add a photo or link into your saved location.

iPad Lesson Plan - Using Mentimeter in the 2nd grade classroom

This week I am working with second grade students to create basic bar graphs / charts, using the free website Mentimeter - www.mentimeter.com

Mentimeter is a free website that allows you to create great looking graphs which are created in real time as people answer your question. The graph below was created by a second grader this morning in about 15 minutes.

What are the advantages of Mentimeter when working with younger students?

• Quick and easy to use.
• vot.rs - this is the address used to answer questions, super easy for children to input
• Each question has a unique 6 digit number, again easy for young children to input
• As a teacher you can create a free account and save your questions 

The lesson plan: Answering questions using Mentimeter & creating your own question to be answered by your friends

I have run this lesson in about an hour. If you had a little more time it would be easier, but certainly achievable in an hour. Completing this in 2 sessions would be best, one to introduce answering mentimeter questions, the other to create their own questions.

Starting out:

It is important to make sure the students are secure with using safari first:

• Explain how to use the address bar, how to clear using the "x", and what the address will be to input: vot.rs
• Talk about tabs, how to switch between, add a new tab, and remove tabs.
• Explain that they will will use the tabs later in the lesson. This will be so the kids can answer survey questions and share their graph at the same time.

Introducing Mentimeter:

• It's best if you set up an account with Mentimeter before the lesson and make 2 or 3 questions. Setting up an account is only needed if you want to save the questions.
• Ask the kids to go and set up Safari, put in the vot.rs address, then return to the carpet.
• Show them the number they have to input, ask them to input the number, answer the question and return to the floor
• Examine the class data, you can talk about the number of respondents, how we could use the data etc.
• Have students use the vote on another question button to answer the next question:
• 
  
• Have the children answer another 2 questions so they know the process of entering the number and submitting their answer

Students make their own survey:

• Have students touch the "Powered by mentimeter.com" link to go to the website.

• From here, show the kids how to enter a question, click on Create Question, and enter in 3-4 answers. Then press, "Start Presenting"

• At this point I encourage the children to use 2 tabs, one to watch their graph and share their question number, and the other to have the vot.rs site open so they can answer other children's questions. Second grade students seem to be able to do this quite easily with limited support.
• The children can then walk around and answer their surveys. The children really enjoy this part of the lesson.

Things to watch out for:

• If the graph doesn't update, just refresh the page
• Students can only vote once from a single device
• With younger kids take some time to explain how to input addresses and how to use tabs in Safari

Sharing and saving the graph:

• There are a number of share options such as embedding which can be accessed from the Share button on the graph page.
• You can also teach the students how to take a screen shot on the iPad so that they can keep an image of the graph for use in another program on the iPad or to add to a blog etc as a static image.

Mentimeter example:

Below is an embedded version of a Mentimeter question I created for this post. If you'd like to add to the answers just click on this link: http://vot.rs/99b5e3

Possible uses:

• Basic surveys
• Asking children what they would like more instruction in. i.e. Would you like to know more about bold beginnings or editing in writers workshop?
• Getting feedback from parent groups
• Follow up / exit tickets to class

Although this is quite a long post, I think it's a great tool to use in the classroom and has lots of uses. I hope you find it useful too.

Shaun Kirkwood

Educational Technology Coach - Singapore American School