Sunday, January 3, 2016

DigiLit Sunday - Pixel Art

 

I love that Margaret Simon has started a Sunday Link Up for posts about digital literacy at her blog to challenge us to share our technology journeys.
 
     Happy New Year!  Thank you to Margaret for starting 2016 with digital ideas for the classroom and sharing her resources.  She's talking about her One Little Word and encouraging her students to choose their One Little Words.  I've done that with my students the last couple years, and it's powerful.  I plan on doing a lesson on it again this year and hoping to choose mine by Tuesday so I can write a Slice of Life about it.  I'll be encouraging my students to write their Slices about their words, too.  Last night my mind was spinning about what I want to do with my students this week.  Back to the teacher mode!!
 
     Before break, my 6th graders read biographies during our Social Responsibility/Leaving a Legacy unit.  The culminating projects were to write an obituary and to construct a monument/memorial for the person they read about; a paper had to accompany the monument/memorial with the following talking points:
 
- Describe the legacy your person left to the world and incorporate it in your monument.  What problem did he/she solve?  What contributions did he/she make?  How did he/she show social responsibility?

- What personality/physical traits did your person have, and how did you add those to the monument?

- What symbolism have you incorporated into your monument?

- When people visit your monument, what mood do you want to create?

- What obstacles did your person overcome?

- Your monument/memorial needs to be visually impactful.  How did you do that?

Some students made posters; others created 3-D projects.  One student even made his out of Legos!  There were some amazing ones!  A few kids wanted to use a digital tool, makepixelart.com, to create theirs.  Of course, I encouraged them to go right ahead!  It's fun to support kids who want to take control of their own learning and creating.  I'd like to share Savannah's paper and pixel art with you:



The image is supposed to be animated - she made it so the Little Curie is driving, but it's not showing up in the blog, unfortunately. 


I look forward to seeing what 2016 with my students brings!

3 comments:

  1. What a great project! I love how you took the idea of a monument to this famous person. Talking about mood and symbolism is genius. Thank you for sharing!

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  2. I get so many ideas from you about projects. I love this one! How creative to make a monument for someone! Thanks for sharing and linking and everything.

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  3. Very creative project, Holly that allows your students Choice that leads to Voice.

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