Epic Citadel Project

This assignment really showed me technology's potential for making my classroom a more dynamic place. Yet, though this project had "bells and whistles", a real "wow" factor, it also had the fundamentals of good Language Arts teaching. Students were immersed in this large, final creative writing project. We used the app, Epic Citadel as a focus. This frankly beautiful app allowed the children to roam an amazingly detailed and rich fantasy setting. What I liked about this app is that there are no characters, challenges or distractions; it is purely just a world waiting to be explored. The potential this left for creative thinking was significant. Plot and character development became central to the teaching in the unit. Students used BookCreator to publish their finished stories. They used iMovie to make introductions for their stories. 
Click the link to see some of the finished work. http://fcsepiccitadel.blogspot.com/. Below is one of the many fine finished projects. Folks at +St George  seem to have discovered this about the same time I did last year. I give full credit for the idea to Tim Parkinson's Blog

Using iMovie Instead of a Newsletter.

   I made this movie last year to explain to parents what was going on in class. Sometimes, actually letting parents see what we are doing is so much more powerful than writing about it.
   It took a little extra effort to make this than to compose a letter, but not too much more. Give it a try! Jump in, the water's warm.
    Also, the video explains the powerful learning practice of Literature Circles, first invented in the early 80's, but became more well known by the mid-90's. If you want to promote active learning in a lower or middle school reading or social studies program, give literature circles a try.
   For more information about Lit Circles, click here to see the book I used to help set them up.

Creative Writing via Inklewriter

Inklewriter

Students don't do a whole lot of story writing in school past elementary school. This, though, is a terrific tool to use in 6-12 social studies, history and language arts classes. It is a choose your own adventure template website. It does the tech work. The student only needs to write the story. As a MS social studies and 5th LA teacher, I have ideas on how I could have applied this to past projects.

Two ideas for how to use this going forward include:

1. Students could write a story where readers are characters in a story or witnesses to a historical event. Imagine the story of the civil war, slavery, revolution, holocaust, Romeo and Juliet, Maus told from different perspectives!
2. Perhaps High School teachers could consider a story in which the reader talks back to the protagonist who speaks in first person. Maybe one could write back to Pi? This idea is the germ of this amazing (and over the top) Frankenstein work. (I'm not expecting kids to make this!) http://www.inklestudios.com/frankenstein/