Our 2nd Graders Are Visiting Our Community Through Walks, eBooks, Books, Conversations and iMovies

We only have 17 days of school left.  In these 17 days we have so many things we want to do with our students.  

In second grade they are finishing the year by learning all about their community.  

Last year during the time they were learning about community, we created flippable eBooks with Evernote, FlipSnack and Skitch.  The collaborative class FlipSnack "My Community" eBook turned out awesome....we all loved it.  It was so much fun taking the iPads out in the community to get pictures of the things they wanted to highlight within their eBook. 

This year the second grade teachers and I decided to take a different direction with the community project.

The second graders are going to create "My Community" iMovies within small groups of 3 or 4 students.  They will each have a different part of their community.....Public Library, Post Office, City Hall, Fire Department, School and School Library, Casey's General Store, Bank, and Vet's Office.

After each group has created their piece of the iMovie about their part of the community, we will put them all together into one "Our Community" iMovie to share with each other, our school, our community and the world.

To start out their research we used several books from our library collection and eBooks with our MackinVIA that focused on different parts of communities.  They can find these eBooks within a Group I set up within MackinVIA...this always makes it very easy for the students to find the eResources that they need.  

I also gave each group a long piece of paper that will be their "Story Script".  They can lay out their iMovie on this anyway they would like.  The biggest requirement....they work together as a group to figure out how they want to develop and create their project.

I just loved walking around the library listening to the conversations and seeing them all work so hard together to create something unique and wonderful that would be part of their collaborative class "My Community" project.

On Friday we will take our walk around Van Meter with the iPads to get video and pictures.

I can't wait to see what they do with their project next.  This will be one that they will gain so much from as they finish second grade and go onto third grade.

And we can't wait to teach you all about our community of Van Meter, Iowa too.