Saturday, May 12, 2012

Creating a County Fun Fact eBook With Our 3rd Graders and Little Bird Tales

littlebirdtales.com cover image
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the work that our 3rd graders, along with their teacher Ann Volk, were doing for their annual country project.

You can read about it on the post entitled Our 3rd Grade Country Project...Something a Little Different This Year.  This post discusses how we used a wiki to store their country research, digital resources for their research, and the use of Web 2.0 tools to complete amazing projects.  

We have had a FUN time over the last couple of months!  

Next week the 3rd graders have their "Country Potluck", which is held every year at the end of this unit for the students to share their wonderful work with families and our school community.  Everything on this night is about their country....the way they dress, what they bring to eat, the presentations that are given, and the facts that they share in conversations.  
This year, Ann and I wanted to create something different that could be shared throughout the event.  We also wanted it to be a collaborative project that all of the students could work on together.  

Little Bird Tales was perfect for this!

We explained the project to the students at the beginning and also added a description to the Van Meter Third Grade Country Project wiki. 

During their research, we had them find FUN country facts as part of their research.  On their wiki page, we added a place for them to also record their FUN facts.  
Within CultureGrams, one of the Iowa AEA Online databases that they used for research, there is a special place for each country called "Culture Facts and Contacts."
This was a great place for the students to find fun, interesting and unusual facts about their country.


The students then recorded what they found during their research under the "FUN Facts" heading in the wiki.
I know everyone at the country potluck will love the Little Bird Tale that our 3rd graders created.


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4 comments:

  1. a to z libraryMay 12, 2012 at 6:32 PM

    Shannon--

    This looks like a lot of fun. I just tried Little BirdTales out, and it was so easy. I love that they have teacher accounts. How did you get everyone's pages into one book? Thanks for blogging about another great idea.

    Anna Zbacnik

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    Replies
    1. Shannon McClintock MillerMay 13, 2012 at 12:40 PM

      Hi Anna,

      Thank you so much...It was so much fun. And this week they will share this project and their individual project with their parents and school community at the country potluck. Always a big highlight of 3rd grade. :)

      This is how I did the book and how our 1st and 2nd graders use it too. We set up the pages (so I set up over 30 pages) and then gave every student a page. They signed in with my email and an easy password. It worked great. I did set up student accounts but found it tricky. :)

      Have a wonderful day, Shan

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  2. Mrs. CrookMay 13, 2012 at 4:14 PM

    Yours is one of my favorite blogs I follow. Wish I could jump in the car or on a plane to spend a day with you! Have a great week!

    Edie

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  3. Mrs. CrookMay 13, 2012 at 4:29 PM

    Hi! With the wiki, do students need an email to access or was it public with the link? Would love to end the year with a project like this after testing.

    Edie

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