Building Community Through Technology
Building Community through Technology
As part of a Language Arts lesson, first grade students at Cunningham Park Elementary used Pixie to write sentences introducing themselves to their classmates. They said, for example, “My name is Johnny, and I like to ride my skateboard.” Next, they drew pictures of themselves doing the activity they selected and then they imported a photograph of themselves into their Pixie drawing. The final step was for students to record themselves reading their sentences (with great care taken to be sure there was one-to-one correspondence between the spoken and the written words.) The final project was assembled and posted to Blackboard. The audio from the project was recorded to CD, and one set was printed and bound. These books and CDs circulate among the first grade classrooms, and now all first graders know a little bit about each other. This was a perfect way to begin teaching writing to first graders while building community and making personal connections!
