Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Happy Constitution Day

Most teachers would call what you are about to see a mistake. The music ends way before the pictures end on this paper slide video and I let it happen! In fact, I encouraged it. I had a mixed group of special education and regular education students in the library doing this paper slide video project to one of Dr. Lodge McCammon's tunes called "We the People." The song is about the first 3 articles in the US Constitution and it was originally intended for a kinesthetic learning activity. I originally did this the kinesthetic activity with 4th grade students but I think this paper slide version allowed the students to be less worried about their appearance and concentrate more on the content.  I did not think the special education students in the group understood what was going on but they did and they put together packets of more pictures than I had planned to go along with the music, so I let them show all of their work. The idea of a paper slide video is to do it in one take with no edits but I hope Dr. Lodge will forgive me when I edit this later to loop his wonderful song (which the kids have been humming all day!) to make this project stand out even more. I love Constitution Day. Other teachers think it is a chore to teach about the Constitution, an interuption in their schedule but for me in the library it is a joy. Hope you enjoy what my students put together in a 20 minute block of instructional time!

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Information Literacy

Like other teachers and librarians I am feeling overwhelmed by the first couple of weeks of school. I found this video to show how I am feeling. I am being bombarded by media and messages and so are my students. How do we make sense out of all the messages? Where do we go to hear the truth? How do we know it's the truth when we hear it? And what do we do to change the world after we process it?