A Hunt for Adjectives

     Students in my 3rd grade resource room have been working hard on reading, writing, and identifying adjectives.  We looked for adjectives in sentences we were reading in books.  We described pictures using adjectives.  We described things we saw in our lives around us using adjectives.  We used the ColAR app and describe our coloring pages that came to life.  We even used our 5 senses to talk about adjectives by eating food like grapes and pop rocks(I will post more pictures soon).  Soon, we will be learning about cocoa (because that is something our students wanted to learn and we posted on our Wonder Wall) and trying out.  I am pretty sure we will be talking about adjectives then too(they don't know what REAL dark chocolate and cocoa tastes like).

Students on a hunt for adjectives

    One of the projects we did to wrap up our adjective unit was go on an adjective hunt.  Each student was given an iPad and sent out into the school for about 7-10 minutes in search of things they wanted to take pictures of to describe.  To manage the time they took on this activity, I had their timers set up on their iPads, so they knew when to return to class. Students LOVED this activity.  They had so many pictures.  I had to convince them to only choose between 4-6 pictures.
    Once the students picked out the pictures they wanted to use, we listed adjectives to describe their pictures.  The graphic organizer for this activity is located at http://www.fcrr.org/studentactivities/v_007a.pdf. When they completed the list, we edited it by checking their spelling.  We practiced sounding out the words and finding word patterns in the words. If they did not know how to spell it completely, I taught them how to use spell check features using technology like Google.  I had the students see if the picture of their item matched up what they were trying to spell. 

    Finally, when they had their words spelled correctly, I had the students get onto pizap and text to their pictures.

    Pizap was very easy for my students to use.  They really enjoyed the all the creative features that were available on Pizap.  Some of the students edited one picture with me and could upload pictures from the computer onto Pizap quickly without my help.   On a side note, As student were working on finishing their project a student said, "Miss Breneman, are you going to post this on the internet?"  I said, "well, of course!  You guys are doing such a great job at this."  He responded, "Well, good!  Are you going to post it on Twitter?"  I said excitedly, "Most definitely!  I have to tell the world how awesome my students are.  You guys did all this hard work and had fun doing it, might as well share it!"  He smiled.  I could tell that he found more value in doing this unit now that he knew people outside of the school would see his finished product

    When the students were finished with editing their pictures, I had my Maymester student from Albion College record the students introducing themselves and their pictures.  I gave them an option of a scripted introduction or they could make up one of their own.  Many of the students wanted to do the scripted recording this time.  I think next time I am going to tell them they have create their own script.  Since this was the first time around, I wanted my students to feel comfortable speaking.

    When all pieces were finished, I pulled all the videos and recordings together and created a video using iMovie.  The video turned out great!  Please take a moment to view it and feel free to comment on their video on this blog.  I told my students I would share some of the comments that I get about their video.