Building Background Knowledge with InterACTIVE Story Boards
Building strong background knowledge is one of the six interACTIVE pieces we believe all educators should have when revising and refining their personal pedagogy. In today’s classroom, we as teachers use many different strategies to help students build background knowledge including discussions, videos, AR/VR and much more. Learn how Story Boards can help your students make connections to their own reading in a fun and engaging way!
Building strong background knowledge is one of the six interACTIVE pieces we believe all educators should have when revising and refining their personal pedagogy. In today’s classroom, we as teachers use many different strategies to help students build background knowledge including discussions, videos, AR/VR and much more.
As primary educators, we like to integrate picture books into our units due to their accessible nature. They are short in length, easy to fit into almost any reading block, and they have an innate ability to help students build background knowledge. This is where the idea of interactive story boards were born!
In Kristin’s fourth grade classroom, when reading nonfiction, she has often incorporated the idea of Multimedia Text Sets developed by Lisa Highfill and the authors of the Hyperdoc Handbook. There is a wonderful article explaining how these Multimedia Text Sets differ from Hyperdocs that you can find here if you would like to learn more. These multimedia text sets are designed to give students the opportunity to explore content curated for a specific purpose. These sets give students more agency, while also approaching a topic with more of an inquiry-based method. It allows students to slow down and develop a sense of curiosity and background knowledge around a subject before diving into the content further.
Now, when using a picture book in the classroom, give students a chance to develop an understanding of the content and the message beyond just the pages of the book. With interactive story boards, students can learn more about the author, their message and see real world applications of the ideas they read about. In this blog we are going to share several interactive story boards we created to use with our own students, and give you the ability to download, edit and use again in your own specific learning environment!
Change Sings
Change Sings is the much-anticipated picture book by presidential inaugural poet and activist Amanda Gorman, anything is possible when our voices join together. As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes—big or small—in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.
In the interactive story board above, students can watch her historical poetic introduction, learn more about the illustrator of the book, read poetry from other famous African American poets, and more! The template can be downloaded as a Google slide or PowerPoint presentation and all text and links are editable!
Make sure to sign up for our email list to get each all of our future story boards first as we create them!
-- Let us know if you’re using any of these ideas in your classroom! Be sure to follow us on social media (@TheMerrillsEDU everywhere) and tag us! 👓👗
For more tips, tricks and lesson ideas for making learning more interACTIVE, check out our books The InterACTIVE Class and Flipgrid in the InterACTIVE Class on Amazon!
InterACTIVE Activities for Parker Looks Up!
Parker Looks Up is quickly becoming a classroom favorite! Here are some 💥FREE💥 interACTIVE activities to tie into the book and quickly engage your students!
Parker Looks Up is quickly becoming a classroom favorite picture book. The book, about a visit to Washington, DC’s National Portrait Gallery changes Parker Curry’s life when she views First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait.
From Amazon.com:
When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald’s transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, she didn’t just see the First Lady of the United States. She saw a queen—one with dynamic self-assurance, regality, beauty, and truth who captured this young girl’s imagination. When a nearby museum-goer snapped a photo of a mesmerized Parker, it became an internet sensation.
If this book is in your plans, here are some of our favorite interACTIVE activities to go along with it. In this blog post, you’ll learn:
(click on any subheading to jump to that section)
Epic & Flipgrid Sticker Activity for Parker Looks Up
In this activity, we compared Michelle Obama with Parker from Parker Looks Up. First, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve created an Epic account. Think of Epic as the Netflix for books. It’s free for educators and is an incredible resource. Start your account by clicking here.
A quick search on Epic for Michelle Obama will return lots of options - including “Read to me” (where the book is automatically read aloud). Here’s a link to the entire collection!
We researched Michelle Obama, learning about her life and work. Then we went on to read Parker Looks Up. You can purchase a copy by clicking right here. After reading the book, we used Flipgrid to describe both individuals. You can add some fun into the mix by having your students use the Flipgrid stickers. Have them search for “hat” and “sunglasses.” They will find a similar pirate’s hat and sunglasses as what is in the story. Students can use these to become Parker! Check out our tweet below to see an example from our class and download the free worksheet from our TPT Store by clicking here or the image!
VR Museum Visit to View Michelle Obama’s Portrait at The National Portrait Gallery
To take things to the next level, why not provide your students with the chance to visit The National Portrait Gallery exhibit featuring Michelle Obama’s portrait? Check it out below or click here to visit it yourself and share with your students.
To provide access to this exhibit via Microsoft Teams, Canvas, Google Classroom and more - share this link with them: https://goo.gl/maps/e9WGCBY9wVu6L1fK8 or click below!
Selfie Portraits: A Flipgrid Portrait Activity for Parker Looks Up
In this activity, our students learned about Michelle Obama prior to reading Parker Looks Up. Then, we took the VR Field trip (above) to visit The National Portrait Museum to view the painting for ourselves. We also took time to learn about the artist. You can find detailed information at this link:
Then, for some added fun, we created portraits of ourselves. Students can snap a photo of themselves, then add it to the instapainting generator. Click here to check it out! Once they have generated their instapainting, they can compare their portrait to their picture using Flipgrid. Have the students upload both versions, using the Flipgrid Shorts camera’s effects (click photo sticker) and use the pause feature to toggle back and forth between the two. Students can then comment on their classmates videos to generate discussion.
Want to try this activity? Grab the Flipgrid Topic from the discovery lab by clicking the button below!
-- Please follow us on social media and tag us with how you’re using Parker Looks Up into your classroom! 👓👗
For more tips, tricks and lesson ideas for making learning more interACTIVE, check out our books The InterACTIVE Class and Flipgrid in the InterACTIVE Class on Amazon!
From Desk to Digital: Examining the Similarities and Difference Between Characters
From Desk to Digital is a series of mini blog posts where @TheMerrillsEDU share ways to transform your students education into an interACTIVE experience. Whether substituting a worksheet or trying something new, these activities are easy and can be implemented into your classroom tomorrow! In this post, learn how your students can become characters from your story using the Flipgrid Shorts camera!
This blog post is from a series of ideas where we take normal, everyday tasks and make them interACTIVE! For more tips and tricks, be sure to search “From Desk to Digital” on our blog!
A key foundational piece in building comprehension in early years is for students to be able to successfully compare the similarities and differences between characters. Often times, students are led to a writing prompt that asks them to decipher the characteristics. But, there’s a more engaging way that will capture your students attention and lead to a higher level of critical thinking. Here’s how you can take this lesson to the next level!
Flipgrid
Flipgrid is a free video based social learning platform. Educators pose a question, then students respond in the form of a video. Classmates are able to view each other’s responses and can leave comments back and forth to one another, creating a web of discussion and ultimately elevating the academic level of the classroom discussion.
Get Started
After reading the story, share the Flipgrid Topic code with your students. Explain that they are going to explain the similarities and differences between the different characters, but to do so….they must BECOME the characters. They can do this by adding emojis to their video. Flipgrid has things like wigs, beards, glasses, etc. These act as stickers and will float on top of the video. So, now your students have to actually think and speak like the character!
Once your students are ready to record, they can access emoji stickers through the Emoji feature right within the Flipgrid Shorts Camera. It helps to teach them to take advantage of the Pause feature, too. In other words, students start off by taking the role of one character, then press pause and become the next character before clicking record again. This process can be easily done back and forth, and now your students are completely emerged in their learning. Not to mention the fact that other students will want to watch and learn from their classmates because the videos are so engaging!
See It In Action
Check out our tweet below to see this in action!
-- Stay tuned for more on how you transform your classroom into a more interACTIVE experience! 👓👗
For more tips, tricks and lesson ideas for making learning more interACTIVE, check out our books The InterACTIVE Class and Flipgrid in the InterACTIVE Class on Amazon!
Lesson Resources for Remote Learning: Spy Transformations
Transforming the classroom has always been one of our favorite ways to engage students. They walk in intrigued, curious as to what the day of learning would hold for them. This heightened interest would help them persevere through difficult tasks they might otherwise give up on. Plan a week of spy themed activities or turn your students into learning detectives. Dress the part, play some music and infuse this theme into any content you are teaching.
Transforming the classroom has always been one of our favorite ways to engage students. They walk in intrigued, curious as to what the day of learning would hold for them. This heightened interest would help them persevere through difficult tasks they might otherwise give up on. It created an atmosphere of challenge balanced with fun and interaction. Well why not do this virtually?! Plan a week of spy themed activities or turn your students into learning detectives. Dress the part, play some music and infuse this theme into whatever content you plan on teaching.
Spy Themed Resources
To help you with your content creation, we have curate various resources available for you to take and use. We spread the resources across platforms in an attempt to find things that everyone can use regardless of how their distance learning lessons are structured and set up. Please feel free to share with colleagues and other teachers in your PLN who may benefit too!
Spy-themed Slides
Slides Mania is an awesome resource for teachers with slide decks for all occasions. Check out this set of slides perfectly suited for problem solving and detective work. Slide decks are available for both Google Slides and Powerpoint.
Seesaw Mystery Slides
This idea was shared with us awhile ago by an educator named Kris Szajner and we think it is a perfect #interACTIVE activity for a week of remote learning lessons themed around spies or detectives. Simply have students search for hidden text within the slide. This is done by changing the color of the text to black after formatting & “hiding” it in place. Then, using the “magnifying glass” (which is just an enlarged text box window), students hunt for the hidden text. It could be multiples of a number, the words matched with definitions, the main idea of paragraphs—easy to adapt to any content and standard. Grab the mystery template here!
Secret Spy-Themed Soundtrack
Add some flair and suspense throughout the week with some music! You can use this free soundtrack on YouTube as a background soundtrack for your live Zoom or Google Meet calls or for any recorded teaching material you make for your distance learners.
Spy and Detective Background Images
Use this slide deck for fun, detective themed images you can use while recording lessons for students or during live calls in the various platforms. Snag the slides here!
Digital Break Out
We love doing break out games with our kids in the classroom, so while out during remote learning why not bring it to your students. This STEM themed digital breakout is one of the many on the Breakout EDU website and does require platform access. But, check out free digital games in the Flipgrid Disco Library. A few of our favorites include, Around the World in 30 Days, Design Decisions, and GPS Mess.
Spy Themed Stories
During remote learning there are many platforms offering free resources for students to read while working from home. Epic! is one of these platforms worth checking out. When searching “spy” a combination of over 60 fiction and nonfiction titles came up ranging from Geronimo Stilton, to WWII Spies and much more. For more info on using Epic click here.
Spy Scavenger Hunt (Live!)
Have you tried playing a game live with your student while on a call. Whether you use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet—the principal of the game is the same. Take the general “scavenger hunt” and turn it into a live “spy hunt.” Have students race through the house to find items various themed items like a flashlight, a magnifying glass, a hat and more. For the complete list click here!
Remote Learning Read Alouds
Storylineonline.com is a great reading resource during remote learin. The Case of the Missing Carrot Cake is just one of the many books available for free use. Narrated by Wanda Sykes, students read to learn about what happens to Miss Rabbit’s cake goes missing and what the detectives do to track down the thieves. Read it here! Another great title offered is Private I. Guana read by Esai Morales and The Coal Thief read by Christian Slater. All books come with activity guides for teachers and for parents.
Buncee Backgrounds and Images
Student creation is always important so why not assign your tasks within a Spy Themed Buncee! Check out their newly designed backgrounds and animations or have students design from scratch on their own! Or, try using a playlist where students can work on tasks in a specific order!
Costume Changes
If you are looking for an additional way to add engagement, try dressing the part! Wear a fun hat or costume while delivering lessons or during live video calls. Send students a fun surprise “stach” in the mail ahead of time so they can get in on the fun too! Check out a few ideas here.
We hope you take these Spy themed resources and create #interACTIVE and engaging lessons for your students during this time of distance learning. Tag us on all social media platforms @TheMerrillsEDU and share will use the creative ways you make learning come alive with your spies and detectives!
Stay #interACTIVE!
-👗➕👓
For more #interACTIVE lesson ideas to use during remote learning, check out our book The InterACTIVE Class on Amazon!
First Chapter Friday
InterACTIVE teaching is all about being reactive and responsive when it comes to what and how we teach. We also know that engagement comes through games and the act of “time running out.” So combine the two and you essentially get the idea behind “first chapter Friday.”
InterACTIVE teaching is all about being reactive and responsive when it comes to what and how we teach. We also know that engagement comes through games and the act of “time running out.” So combine the two and you essentially get the idea behind “first chapter Friday.”
This idea was pitched to me by my awesome, amazing, and ultra creative reading coach. (Find her on social media at @literacyunscripted on both Twitter and Insta) She knows my love of books—chapter, picture, fiction, nonfiction—you name it, we love to read and talk about it. We share books with each other constantly and we both have a strong belief that students should be able to read what they want and chose based on interests rather than by reading level, points earned, genre, etc.
In the perfect utopian classroom students would be reading often, choosing their own books and finding time to become active and avid readers, but we all know that this isn’t the reality. Our classrooms are filled with standard driven lessons, curriculum pacing and unfortunately for many yearly state assessments. Students are given very little time, maybe 20 minutes a week—if that—to spend inside their school library and are often unaware of the titles housed along the shelves. And don’t even get me started on the titles that are out there that just might not be available in the school library. So the idea of #firstchapterFriday was pitched to help introduce our students to more books.
In a nut shell, #firstchapterFriday is a 15 minute part of our day every Friday where a new book is introduced to the class and the first chapter is read aloud. It is a great way to expose students to new topics and titles and also provides a quick and easy way to review genres, writing styles, new authors and so much more. We have been doing it at the very end of the day after we pack up but it could easily be how you start the day, or squished in between other scheduled parts of the routine day.
The books can be from anywhere, but I would suggest choosing books you either have in your own classroom library or ones that are available in the school library so they are available for students to check out and read if they choose to do so after hearing the first chapter. Here are the titles we have read so far in my 4th grade classroom.
Giving students a choice when it comes to their reading is key to helping them become independent readers while also being an easy and simple way to share and expose them to more.
Stay interACTIVE!
-K 👗
Looking for more interACTIVE ideas for your classroom? Check out our book The InterACTIVE Class!
Analog Analyzation
Technology is an awesome resource that we have at our fingertips. It creates accountability, gives accessibility and can foster creativity. But technology isn’t a bandaid that should be used to fix a lesson. It also isn’t something that your lesson should morph around in order to incorporated. As we always say, start with your content and then see if there are ways to foster more voice, involvement and creativity using technology.
Technology is an awesome resource that we have at our fingertips. It creates accountability, gives accessibility and can foster creativity. But technology isn’t a bandaid that should be used to fix a lesson. It also isn’t something that your lesson should morph around in order to incorporated. As we always say, start with your content and then see if there are ways to foster more voice, involvement and creativity using technology.
But even an avid #edtech user like myself loves some good old analog analyzation in my ELA classroom. Teach plot was our target for this particular week and we were focusing specifically on character traits and evidence supporting our descriptions. We started by reading the book The Most Magnificent Thing.
You could read any great book with a well developed character but I like this one for the beginning of the year. Its message is one of determination, hard work, frustration and the confidence that develops when you persevere. It fits nicely into the previous SEL lessons we do first week. But again, you could choose any story that fits within your current unit.
After reading, each student set out to work on their own characterizations. Using EdPuzzle to review the story, students were give three tasks:
1) Find evidence from the story they could use to support the character embodied the set of traits they were given. (I gave them the list of traits for this activity. They were responsible, innovative, confident, engaged and reflective) Students went back and watched the story read aloud on EdPuzzle pausing it along the way to record the evidence they found for the various traits.
2) Rank the traits based on how much they felt the character showed them throughout the story. This is where the students were able to pick up, rearrange and move the post-its after finding the various evidence points. This was an important part of the lesson and really the foundation for using the post-it notes in the first place. This step allowed students to reflect and revise their thinking after they worked through all the evidence. Many students changed their original thinking of how the traits should be ranked once they took the time to support the thinking.
3) Explain the ranking order they chose and discuss the importance of that #1 ranked trait to the theme of the story. In the story we read, the character sticks with her project and works through the frustration to accomplish building her creation. So for example, if confidence was their most important trait, students explain the importance of needing confidence to get through tough situations.
The next step will of course be for students to share their rankings and elaborate on their thinking using Flipgrid. But in this lesson, working out thoughts first before sharing on video was the way to go. Feel free to grab the template to use if you can or use the one without a title for you to rank and explain in another subject or with another standard.
-K 👗
*Some of the links in this post contain affiliate links and we will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on the link.*
When EdTech Meets Children's Lit
Maybe one of the main reasons why I love using picture books in the class is because they are responsive—they are a result of people’s reactions to the world around us. Picture books help me pivot. They help me change up what I am doing to connect with and meet the needs of the students I currently have in the classroom.
Being primarily a teacher of language arts, my lessons often revolve around picture books. And if I am being completely honest, I am a tad obsessed with picture books. I love how we can sit together and read them as a class in a more intimate setting. Illustrations always vary and exposing students to various expressions and emotions through illustrations is always a win-win. But maybe one of the main reasons why I love using picture books in the class is because they are responsive—they are a result of people’s reactions to the world around us. Picture books help me pivot. They help me change up what I am doing to connect with and meet the needs of the students I currently have in the classroom.
A while back I wrote and received a grant from a local organization who works very closely with teachers and schools in our district. Normally when I write grants I steer toward technology and other things for the class that I may not be able to provide my students with on my own. But this grant was different—it was for books! I have always been an advocate—maybe now more than ever—to not only use technology in meaningful ways in my classroom, but also to teach students how to use it responsibly on their own. I just received the order of books and I thought it would be fun to share them with you!
When Charlie loses his ability to be online or access his technology, he becomes frantic and even a tad angry. But, after he gets through his initial feelings, he finds other things to pass the time while learning to connect with the world around him.
Little Chicken gets really caught up with all she can do and buy online. She has innocent fun until her clicking has her meeting a new friend online. Chicken leaves to go meet this new friend only to realize that not everything on the internet is like it appears.
Similar to Chicken Clicking, in this book Popcorn the chicken becomes a bit obsessed with her new “friends” she meets online to the point where she neglects and offends the friends she sees face-to-face. But when her new “online” friends come to meet up, Popcorn ends up needing the help of her real friends to stay safe.
Fourth graders in Mr. Dickinson’s class learn all about finding reliable information online as they work on their presidential fact-finding contest. Students learn that the Internet can provide true facts but not everything there is true!
Technology can be useful and fun, but it can also be used to trick others. Billy Goat and his friend Cyril get caught up in using their words against someone they haven’t met in person. When they finally do meet they are in for a surprise and owe an apology for what they’ve done.
This book isn’t about technology, but I plan to pair it with the book above—Troll Stinks. It shares the theme of how words can hurt and how we need to put time into our interactions with others whether face to face or online.
A bored little mouse takes an iPhone and immediately becomes entranced into a world where all else fades away. He loses sight of what’s around him and possibly misses out on the real fun.
Video game addictions are on the rise and Jasper helps illustrate how kids can balance real life with their game life by gaining control.
This story does a great job illustrating to kids the importance of being responsible when posting texts, tweets, posts and pics. This story helps illustrate to kids how their decisions online will be around forever and helps them learn how to navigate technology that is every changing.
Nerdy Bird and his friend Vulture are very different—Nerdy loves technology but Vulture finds it boring. When Nerdy finds new friends online on Tweetster he has to learn how to balance his new “friends” with his real one.
After receiving a hand-me-down camera phone, the art of selfie taking leads to adventures and photos of everything. But at the end of the day kids needs to recharge their batteries too!
I am looking forward to reading these books with my students, and I will blog in the future as I find fun and engaging ways to integrate them into my ELA standards. You can also head over to our Instagram page @themerrillsEDU and check out our story where I unboxed the books live and shared a little about them. I would love to see any lessons you do with your students so tag me on social media @themerrillsedu with any great lesson ideas or experiences!
Until next time!
-👗➕👓
If you are looking for engaging lessons and ideas to make teaching and learning with technology more relevant, check out our book The InterACTIVE Class today!
Tracing Character Emotions with Text Messages!
What if you could bring characters to life by generating a text message thread between them? Now, you can!
First, we read the story, “Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon.” After we read the story, the students had to think back to various points in the text to determine how the main character (Molly Lou) was feeling. To do this, we used a “Bubble Map,” which is used to record adjectives. But, I also wanted them to focus on the emotions at different times in the story. So, we combined the bubble map, with a “Flow Map.” Smashing these two together gave us a “Blow Map!”
Using their “Blow Map,” we went through the story describing Molly’s emotions. I expected this to be challenging, so I was prepared to allow the kids to give me both adjectives and emojis - which they could then talk through to come up with an adjective. To help differentiate, I put the Blow Map on OneNote and shared it to certain students on Microsoft’s Teams. Here’s a shot of the OneNote file:
After going through the story, we used the recording sheets below to create a fake text message thread between Molly Lou and her grandmother. A student quickly pointed out that some of the adjectives we came up could be used for Molly’s Grandma, too!
Next , we took the recording sheets and created a fake texting thread using the app: TextingStory. Then, we shared our responses on Flipgrid to produce a class discussion and share our ideas. Here’s a 40 second tutorial:
Last but certainly not least, we created a fake Instagram generator to post “updates” on how Molly was feeling throughout the story. The kids even used the hashtags: #Beginning, #Middle, and #End. Grandma also got in on the fun!
To create something like the images above, just google: “fake Instagram profile.” There are a bunch of options, depending on your comfort level. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions on how this all worked!
—J 👓