Book Commercials & More!

I know I told you yesterday that I probably wouldn't write again until I made it to Hawaii due to the stress of preparing for our trip to Hawaii and all of the other events in our life this week, but I had such a good lesson today with my fifth graders that I just had to share it with you tonight.

Kids inspired to do book reports? Have you ever heard of such a thing?

You see, just a couple weeks ago we had an entire new computer lab installed filled with new desktop iMacs. It was like Christmas morning that day....we left school on a Tuesday with a lab filled with ancient old flavored iMacs and returned in the morning to the brand new machines. The energy and excitement from staff and students has been amazing.

Anyway, back to the totally cool lesson from today. I gathered a collection of my favorite picture books and had fifth graders spontaneously make "Book Commercials." Each movie needed to have an introduction, a summary, a lesson or message learned, and reasons people might want to read the book. Some students asked to use the book they've just finished and others chose a picture book. We used iMovie and the built-in cameras and almost all students were done within the 45 minutes of work time. Our only issue was that by using the built-in microphones and all students working at once, there is a lot of background noise in the recordings.

The technical aspects included adding titles, text, video of their book commercial, adding music during the intro and outro when the titles and credits are rolling and transitions.... Great success and enthusiasm for book reports! Better yet, this has inspired their teachers to try a book report in this manner next month!

I plan to gather a couple tomorrow so I can work to post them on the Mastermind site while I am in Hawaii! I'll let you know when I have some posted.

Hopefully the rest of your week is great.....even with the full moon.

Some of you wanted more information about how the Easter date is calculated (which does rely upon the full moon, which means the week before Easter will always be influenced by the moon), so click here for the article I wrote on the topic.

Another funny thing I can report about this Gadget Girl is how I managed to find babysitters for our dwarf hamsters by using Facebook tonight! I was really stumped about how I was going to leave them for over a week when I decided to try Facebook....and found multiple babysitters within minutes! Buddy & Snickers probably won't know what to do with all of the attention they'll get this next week!

And, finally, just another example of how kids integrate what they learn at school with their

playing.....Hannah had all of her Webkinz pets out and she's slowly moving them from one room to the next. Then she explains to me how they all live on a farm that makes them work, so one of the animals is acting like Harriet Tubman and moving the animals to safety....just like on the Underground Railroad! Never would I have expected that explanation of her play tonight.

Made me realize I should ask her more often about what she is playing and why.

Something to think about....

Happy Easter.....

Kathy Cothran

"The Original Gadget Girl"