April 22, 2011 EARTH DAY
Our school participated in the Earth Day Celebration sponsored by the Colville Confederated Tribes. Grades 1-3 attended as well as the Eaglet Dancers with their teacher, Ms. Terrie Sanger.
Enjoy reading this for Class Blogging Challenge for Earth Day 2011:
Back at school students in grade four not participating in the Earth Day celebration completed their family Easter art.
Students in grades 5-8 science classes learned more about the Earth from local National Park Service Rangers, including Janice Elvidge.
Grade Six writing class students wrote Thank Yous to the Earth. I considered drawings and poetry, but they, being the digital kids, said, “Can’t we just google a picture?”
The answer to searching Google was “No.” As global citizens we learn to use those pictures that belong to us, or are shared with us by others through a Creative Commons license. A favorite site for student projects is Pics4Learning, which grants permission for students to use the pictures donated to their site. With that option, we changed the project: create a Google Presentation slide with a cited image from Pics4Learning and add a poem or text of thanks to our Mother Earth.
I demonstrated very quickly these steps to students:
- log in to their my.nsdeagles.org site
- open a presentation
- insert a two-field slide for text and picture
- delete the title slide
- go to Pics4Learning
- search for their topic about Earth
- download the image
- open the image
- resize to 500 pixel width and save
- return to slide and upload image
- return to Pics4Learning to copy the URL as citation
- return to slide to paste citation
- add their poem or text
- share slide with teacher
As you can see, students today can follow directions and create in one class period their ideas about a topic: in this case, one thing on the earth for which they are thankful.
Enjoy the Sixth Grade Happy Birthday and Thank You to Mother Earth:
Photo Credits
Violets, Banners, Bunny by Sheri Edwards
Earth Day photos cited on each slide
This activity also included finding Creative Commons pictures for the Class Blogging Challenge
http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2011/04/03/image-search-challenge-5-march2011/
Ms. Edwards