The Hobbit Infographic Project....A Great Collaborative Project From The Classroom To The Library

One of the best parts of my job is the collaborating I get to do with the classroom teachers.  I love sitting down with them, looking at their curriculum, and thinking of new ideas to infuse technology, creativity, and wonderful resources into our students lives.  

When I met with the 5th grade teachers a few weeks back, we talked about what they had coming up

over the next two months.  Janelle Thompson, one of the 5th grade teachers, was reading The Hobbit to them in class.  With The Hobbit coming out in the theatre this month, she wanted to read it to them first and then have a night where they met at the movie too.

The Google Doc above is what I use with each of the grade levels as we collaborate.  It is a perfect way to keep track of our ideas and the resources that we gather together.

One thing that came from our collaboration that day was the need to give the 5th graders a little tool box of different Web 2.0 tools that they could use for projects.  I have used several with them but there were a lot that I wanted to introduce them to this year as well.  I decided that a new "5th Grade Symbaloo" linked to our "Technology/Library Symbaloo" would be the best way to share and give them access to these tools and a few other resources that they may need.  

Janelle told me that she wanted to find an online tool for the students to use with The Hobbit.  I had wanted to do an infographics lesson with the 5th graders.  I thought this would be the perfect lesson to use an infographic tool with and after talking with Janelle she agreed.  

We split up the responsibilites a bit....

I found the infographic tool that we were going to use.  I asked my PLN on Twitter and read a few blog posts about other elementary students creating infographics.  I decided to try out Piktochart.  It was easy to use and had a lot of really great features for the students to choose from.  

Janelle typed up the requirements of the project.  Since this was going to be tie into their reading and language arts, Janelle created requirements that fit the needs of their curriculum.  

You can view "The Hobbie Infographic Project" in this Google Doc here.  We printed off these two pages and gave them to the students.  This is what the students would be using as a "work space" to gather the information they needed before they started on their infographic.  

Janelle also created an example using Piktochart.  I just love how her infographic turned out....Piktochart makes such beautiful, professional looking infographics.  

We would also be using a rubric for the assessment piece of this project.  

On the day that we introduced the infographic project to the students, Janelle came to the library during their library and technology time with me.  Janelle explained the requirements of the project and I spoke to them about finding images and researching other information that they needed online.  When we went to the lab to demonstrate how to use Piktochart, we had fun showing them the features and creative ways to design their infographic.

We then came back to the library, got the laptops out, and they began their work.  The students were very excited to get the information they needed wrote down so they could start their infographic.

For a few of the items needed, they found their information online.  They looked up great riddles and some needed help remembering a few of the characters in The Hobbit.

As I walked around the library, I saw great student engagement....They were all having so much fun recalling what they had learned from the book.

 I especially loved when I looked over and Greta was using her iPhone for research too.

As we work on The Hobbit infographics over the next two weeks, I can't wait to see what they create.

They are very excited for their work to be published online and to share with all of you.