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Posts tagged Science
Making Superheroes to Represent the Planets
Jan 19th
We returned to our information Voicethreads today that we created yesterday about the different planets in our solar system. I wanted the children to consolidate some of the information that they had learned about the planets.
To do this we asked the children to create a superhero that represented a planet and some of it’s characteristics. Clearly this ties in well with the topic we are running, and provided the children some rehearsal for when they create their own original hero. But I think works well whether you are doing this topic or not, as a superhero is ideal for personifying the different physical characteristics of the planets.
We had a look at two different free online superhero creators: from Marvel Kids and HeroMachine from UGO. Both are very good but we decided that the HeroMachine had more choice in terms of customising the hero. This would of course provide better choice for the children when creating their own. (We used HeroMachine version 2.5 rather than the Alpha version 3.0) Both creators give you a massive palette of masks, skins, tails, accessories, wings, auras and insignias (plus much more) these can all be coloured, layered and customised.
The children were working in pairs on laptops in the classroom. I gave each pair a planet to work on and directed them to three things for information:
- The Voicethread we made that gathered everyone’s information in one place, a good starting point.
- Websites tagged with “planets” from our Delicious account.
- Any other web based resources they can find.
Before they set off I opened HeroMachine and demonstrated making a character representing Earth and highlighted the choices I was making and the reasons I made them – like a modelled writing session. For example the colours green and blue and why I used more blue to show the ratio of water to land. I emphasised the need to understand the planet they were representing and asked them to think of colour, size and atmosphere. This kept it simple and achievable as some planetary facts are too complex to represent.
You can see the start of a Jupiter based superhero here in which children have chosen the largest hero body to show it’s size and also a red belt which they explained represents the red spot on Jupiter.
Venus is represented here and is shown with the colours of heat as it is close to the Sun with surface temperatures over 460 degrees Celsius.
One pair spent some time looking at a Wikipedia article on Saturn and decided that they would make a male superhero because Saturn was a God, which is great – they went on to explore ways they could represent the rings with either superhero clothes or objects he would carry.
I am looking forward to finishing these off with the children, it has been a great way to personify the facts about the planets and has really helped to consolidate their understanding of the solar system.
What Planet Are You From?
Jan 18th
We used Voicethread today for some work about planets in our solar system as part of our Superheroes work. Generally we have used it to support speaking and listening prior to a fiction writing task, but it is equally effective in gathering and sharing research and factual information.
The children worked in pairs on a laptop – opened up the Voicethread we had created and used Planet 10 from the Planet Science website as the main source of information. Not only is this a great interactive model of the solar system but it has information about each planet presented in different ways.
Children also gathered information from other information websites tagged with “planets” on our Delicious account. They then added that information in written or voice form to the Voicethread. A simple way to create a pooled information resource which is presented and created in different forms. As I said in my Teachmeet Takeover talk at BETT last Friday, Voicethread allows children to work together in an open way. They can see everyone’s comments and contributions updating in real time – they can tap into the information others find as well as share their own.
Our next step will be to personify the different planets as Superheroes and link the physical features we learn about with some superhero powers or special abilities.
I like to use Google Earth when talking about the rotation of the Earth and the sunlight layer, shown in the image below helps to model this even further. “What happens in between the dark part and the light part?” a question from one of the children was a good discussion starter.
Another feature of Google Earth, that is often unexplored, is the different things you can view apart from the Earth. These are Sky, Mars and The Moon. Looking closely at The Moon there is an abundant set of information about the various lunar missions, landings and physical features.
We discussed the size and scale of the craters we could see (we found one that was 115km across!) and also tracked the route the Appollo 15 Rover took on the surface.
High resolution panoramic imagery is also available dotted around these landing sites and is a fascinating glimpse into the lunar landscape.
It made me think about combining some of the digital storytelling ideas that we have done using Google Earth and use Google Moon or Mars as a science fiction bachdrop. The incredible imagery would certainly be a great starting point for descriptive writing about a setting.
3 Video Resource Sites to Support Maths, Science and Spelling
Dec 4th
There has never been a better time for finding online resources to support learning. I subscribe to the RSS feed from my delicious network and my Google Reader is regularly bulging with useful links to sites that can support the work going on in the classroom. Here are three highlights that use video as the central media to help support curriculum work.
Spelltube brings the weekly spelling list into the technological age.
Spelling videos have been created for each of the 3000+ words in the National Spelling Bank, from which teachers can generate and assign a word list to their Key Stage 2 pupils. Memorable characters help to reinforce spelling concepts in an enjoyable way that will appeal to various learning styles.
The site allows a teacher to sign up for a free class account, which then provides children with individual login details. Spelling lists can be assigned and scores tracked within the site. It is tailored towards the UK national curriculum and supports the spelling objectives within it. I think it provides a great alternative toSpelling City.
The idea of SIMPLE SCIENCE is to have informative music video presentations for use in the primary school classroom.
They are designed to be used as part of a lesson to reinforce learning objectives and scientific concepts and also as a useful revision tool for the SAT exams. They work particularly well on a large whiteboard but can also be viewed on the computer screen and TV.
Once again the resources support the Key Stage 2 QCA Science units in the UK and each of the sections provides a video of the science behind the topic and a song to help the children too. The films can even be bought as a DVD or the songs on CD. There is no sign up or login needed to watch the films.
The site uses Vimeo embedded films and you can see Simple Science on Vimeo here. The fact they have not used YouTube makes it much more accessible in schools. Apparently they have a whole stack of early years songs and films planned for next year which should be worth looking out for.
Learning Clip is an online resource to support teachers, teaching assistants and parents implementing the renewed primary mathematics framework.
The resources are structured to follow precisely the learning objectives of the renewed framework. For ease of navigation the resources are also listed by topic.
They all have the same easy to use format. Each clip comprises of, a short introductory video, an interactive activity, a worksheet and a set of notes.
After an initial registration a user needs to login to access the resources. It is worth noting that on the home page it states that the resources are being made available to teachers for free “during the development phase”. I assume from this that there may be a time when the resources require a fee to use them.
During the initial development phase of the project all the clips have been freely available to anyone interested in teaching and learning mathematics. From the 16th January 2010 some of the resources will only be available by subscription. The rest will continue to be free to registered users.
I hope you find the three resources useful and find a place in your classroom for using them. Please let me know of any other video based resource sites that you know of or have found useful in the classroom.
