Biome Movie Trailers

Here are the students iMovie trailers. They used the planning documents to build the content before starting to film. Some finished, so did most of the video. More to come. There are a few more groups I need to upload. We are planning to host a "Film Fest" with the trailers, green screen movies and movie posters! Should be fun....

The Rainforest from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.

The Rainforest from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.

Animal Adaptations and iPads

My fourth grade students have been studying animals and adaptations. As a way to apply what they have learned about the why and the ways animals adapt they created new animals with adaptations to survive. The students had to select an environment and then decide on an adaptation that would help them survive in the conditions of the environment, help the animal eat, or prevent the animal from being eaten. Students worked on paper first and then chose either Audioboo and recorded a podcast and added the picture, or worked on Educreations. A few surprises: two partners recording the podcast together! Collaboration with the audio after they collaborated on their animal. Other students used the web search on Educreations to show how the animal they created was a mashup of animals already in existence. I tend to be resistant of students just searching for pictures, but the student example below proved she was capable,she was intentional and curated her photos properly to add to her message about her animal's adaptations!

I am very proud of their work! See the examples below.

listen to ‘Two headed turtah’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Wolf Kai by jaylan’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Greatness of princess the eagle’ on Audioboo

Equalize Our Education!

My students have just wrapped up a unit on examining education and the story of equity. They first went back into the past of public education and created a timeline of major equity and equality events in education. They heard for the first time about how schools were set up at a local level, when the Freedmen's Bureau started black schools after slavery ended, when schools were integrated by the Supreme Court and then in the real world with the story of the Little Rock Nine, they moved into the 1970s and learned about Title XI and the Disabilities Act. This lead us into the more present day story of education. I wanted to make the context personal and also continue on our exploration of equity in education. Thanks to my amazing teaching partners our students have explore equity is a variety of formats and context.

The students examined the choices offered by their own school system, Chicago Public Schools. Many did not know the choices they had beyond attending a neighborhood high school, as they all attend a neighborhood elementary school. After determining the many choices and options, they then began to notice not only the difference in type and enrollment requirements but the drastic differences in graduation rates, attendance rates, test scores, demographics and special programs offered by the different schools. There were many comments around the exploration of schools from the amazing special programs from sports to the arts and rigorous advanced placement programs at some the best schools and the disappointment at the limited options offered at some neighborhood and smaller schools. The students worked with partners to create "school profiles" using a keynote slide, researching the statistics and adding a photo of the school.

More important than the technology and great slides they took a look for the first time what their choices and their futures as Chicago Public School students could and would be in a few short years. We had a very revealing conversation about what aspects they "wanted" in a high school, what would be equitable in a high school and many of them came to the realization that only a handful of the high schools in our city offer those to students, and even more worrisome those were the schools that were the most selective and hardest to gain entry into. It seems my students came a conclusion that finding the right school for what they want did not always mean they were able to attend it. Which begs the question of our unit, is this system equitable? Is this providing a fair and free education to all?

One thing I do know is by providing my students access to the information and having them examine it critically I think they see the importance of equity and how far we still need to go to have a better version of it in our local school system. They realize that some of the inequity starts with access to the pertinent information to make an informed decision. They have realized the true impact of education both formal and informal when it comes to their own lives. I am so proud of their work, see it here!


We have a QR map created to share with our community:

Excitement about Blogs

Students have completed three blog posts this year and each time the work has been improving. I am trying to have students write about content with as little restriction as possible. I want them to tell about what they have learned. I find that students are sometime crippled by the freedom to "write about what you learned" and need more specifics. I often tell them they can write and tell about a lab they conducted. This often leads to describing the lab process and use of vocabulary, but does not hit the big "concept" ideas. Other students write about big ideas but don't give the details and specifics to show depth of understanding and often have shallow posts. At the same time some students are really surprising me with what they are writing about and they are amazing me with their posts! The excitement is great and I will continue to work with them to create meaningful posts.

Read more here at our blog page:

Here are some examples ranging the descriptions above:

A student writes about the lab process.

"What we did for sedimentary rock to make them form is got a small cup in a big cup.we put the smallcup in side the big cup in we put the sand in it.then we got glue in water in put it in the the cup.in let it sit for 3 days or 4 when we got back we had tear the cup off in it become a rock."


A student explaining some learning through a lab experience.

"The crust doesn’t just get magma on it’s surface.I know there’s a way to get the magma on the crust.I think that the magma erupts for some reason.and after it’s ready to come out like a volcano.it must burn through the crust and get on the crust.
So,everybody knows that lava is hot and the igneous must be broken off when the volcano erupted .and it must have made another igneous rock and the pressure makes the magma must shoot up out of the vent.
And it must have happened when the pressure went up.
And I think that the mantle magma makes waves and builds pressure to make a huge wave.and that wave must go through the vent and gets on the crust.

And the igneous rock must break off and then that’s how I think igneous rocks are formed like that.and the rock breaks of again and more igneous rocks get formed more"


Information combining new knowledge and a lab experiences.

"These two weeks we been talking about sedimentary rocks. They are formed by wather and deposits of eroded rocks. The sedimentary rock then dries and dries and is slot of pressure. Then form. The particles start to end up covering.

shale is a sedimentary rock.The color is dark gray. The size is big.It is hard. Another rock is conglomerate. The color is yellow,gray,and white.
The sand stone color is red. It feel rough. It is small.

And the last is gypsum the color is light gray.It bumpy."