Element Report gr. 6... UPDATED 12/7/16

With the addition of our Chromebooks, our sixth graders have been able to do some exciting techology activities! One that they are currently working on is creating a Science report about an element. A report doesn't sound very exciting, but the completed report is no normal report. Rather, it is a webpage, complete with links, graphics, and text.

I had hoped to complete the webpages prior to Thanksgiving break, but our schedule was such that time did not allow. The webpages should be completed by the end of the evening on the Wednesday after break, November 30, 2016.

Please find HERE a copy of the instruction sheet that each sixth grader received. Elements have been chosen and students should have logged in to make their initial webpage. Most students have begun their research, and some have started typing text into their pages. This coming week, students will learn how to copy/paste the links into their webpages and how to download/upload photos.

Please encourage your sixth grader to be working on this so that the pages are completed on time.

HERE is the link to view all of the webpages created by our sixth graders!

Grade Six Word Cloud Book Reports

Sixth graders have been using our school's brand new Chrome books in many ways: answering an extended response question using Padlet, taking the STARS assessment tests, and making word clouds.

What's a word cloud? It is a visual representation of multiple verbal ideas to create a theme. Word clouds have been around a long time as far as computer technology goes. Some popular websites that help users create clouds are Wordle, ABCya, Tagxedo, and Tagul.

I introduced our sixth graders to Tagul on Sept. 19th after I showed them a video of word cloud book reports created by our current eighth graders. They were hooked! Word clouds look FUN! What they didn't realize is that there is MUCH thinking involved in creating a cloud, especially for a book report. No sentences can be written; thoughts are expressed in words, actually the size of words and the number of times a word appears. Imagine trying to develop a book report using only single words!

Here is what our students created...


Now that our sixth graders are familiar with word clouds, they can use them to do projects in other classes or make gifts/cards for family and friends. Words clouds created on Tagul are able to be printed and downloaded. When you download a word cloud file from Tagul, you can use it as a computer desktop background or as part of a screen saver. It is a typical image file just as a photo is. Students are welcome to use the class account that I opened for this project or they may create their own free account at Tagul with your permission.