Thursday, April 25, 2019

Trying Out Destiny Collections

Students in Literacy Studies recently had the opportunity to try out Destiny Collections, a relatively new feature in our library management system. You can read about Collections from their website:

Each grade level was working on projects that lended themselves easily to Collections work: sixth graders are preparing their Biographies in Action projects while seventh graders are collaborating with one another on their World Peace Day projects.

Students created Collections and added resources, edited their Collections, and shared them with their partners and teachers.


Monday, April 8, 2019

MySimpleShow Book Trailers

We're always looking for ways to promote reading and books, and a popular choice among students and teachers is book trailers. Late in the third quarter, both sixth and seventh graders created book trailers using a "new to us" platform--MySimpleShow.
We found several things very helpful about introducing students to MySimpleShow: 1) students could log in using their Google accounts; 2) students were directed on the site to write their "scripts" before concerning themselves with images; 3) a number of templates were available, including a template designed to talk about books; and 4) students could easily access a shareable link so their reading teachers could also view their trailers.

We began our work with viewing sample book trailers and thinking about how we might write about one of our favorite books. The template we used included slides featuring information about the characters, setting, and plot of a book, and students also had the option to include additional information should they like to do so.

Once students were finished, we made use of a digital gallery walk to share their work. (You can read about a  digital gallery walk from Matt Miller and Ditch That Textbook on this blog post.) Students' trailers were open and ready to play, and classmates viewed different examples, using sentence starters as response prompts, such as "I wanted to hear more about..." and "This book reminds me of..." and "I was interested in the plot when..." During class, students were able to look at 2-3 trailers and respond to the trailer creators.




Here are a couple examples of students' work:

Since You've Been Gone trailer

Cinder trailer