Sssssssnakes

First grade has been super busy! (as always!) We had a long, scaly, rat-eating visitor this month. You guessed it... A SNAKE! Ok, so it wasn't a real one of course, but we enjoyed it all the same! Thanks to my friend Joe, we had a traveling Webkinz snake visit our classroom. We did a K-W-L, and researched some quick facts about snakes. I let the class decide what they wanted to do... and quickly their hands began shooting up in the air. I loved the excitement as they told me their ideas. One group wanted to write a comic script, and use ToonDoo to create it. Another group wanted to green screen with a snake moving behind them, and one group wanted to use the iPod to record facts. These groups quickly got to work creating scripts for their project. One group took a different approach... they wanted to write from the point of view of a mouse, the snakes prey. I had remembered seeing a mouse on Voki... so they went with that idea. As I facilitated this process, visiting each group as they worked together, I'm sure I had a huge smile on my face. Here were my little leary 1st graders... who came to me in August and probably had no clue what an iPod was, busily writing scripts, working collaboratively, and all the while, totally engrossed in what they were doing. However, the best part of this project will come when the students see their work published for a bigger audience. To me, the excitement and look of pride on their faces is priceless. Check out their finished projects here!