Life Lessons with Short Films & Nearpod

Last term I did an awesome lesson which used two of my favourite apps - Youtube and Nearpod.  As the term was coming to an end, I felt that my students needed to be reminded of the importance of acceptance, kindness, non-judgement and tolerance.  I was talking to one of my workmates, not sure of what to do on a Friday. She said that she often used YouTube as a starting point for writing.  She uses CGI short film animations.  This got me thinking about how I could use film to help teach some concepts that I felt my learners were forgetting.  Then I remembered The Present.

The Clip

The Present is a very powerful clip that my kids loved! We watched it twice before beginning our Nearpod. I chose to let it run through without stopping or asking questions because I wanted them to take in the film as a whole.

Retelling

My first activity on Nearpod was using 'Collaborate' where students had to retell the most important bits of the film.  I was impressed by the level of engagement.  As always, I use their ideas as a starting point for further discussion/elaboration.

Inferring

The next activity was an 'Open Ended Question'. This was an inference question, which asked students to think about why the mum wanted to give his son a present. The next activity was a 'Collaborate' asking Why did the boy get so angry when he noticed what was wrong with the dog? The students were able to come up with some insightful ideas for both questions.

Evaluating

Next, students shared their opinions on the boys reaction to dog, and whether it was right or wrong.

Author's Purpose

Lastly, students shared their ideas about what the message was that the author/creator was trying to tell their audience.

Creating a DLO

After all the discussion that was drawn from the Nearpod activity, my learners created DLOs to share their learning.  I let them create anything they wanted. They created Comics, Google Drawings, wrote poems, recounts and wrote explanation pieces.

Summing it up

Overall I was pretty pleased with how this lesson went.  My learners were really engaged and it created a great opportunity to discuss being grateful, kind and non-judgemental. They loved the film and Nearpod helped them to feel eager to share their ideas with the class.  Creating a DLO was a great way for me to see what they took away from the lesson. It was cool to see the broad range of DLOs created. 

Digital Immersion: Creating a Site Using HTML

Today we consolidated our learning and understanding of Google Sites, HTML and critical thinking in current events through the creation of a current events page.  The 2016 MDTA cohort was set with the challenge of each creating a multi-modal page on Google Sites about a current event.  In previous weeks we discussed critical thinking in social studies and reading, and chose current event topics.  We then had a week to come up with the content of the lesson.  

I found creating my change challenging but very addicting!  After plenty of trials and errors, it was a great feeling to correctly fix something using HTML.  A challenge I had was that I wanted to unmerge cells that had previously been merged together.  This was tricky as when you merge cells you need to delete another.  Merging cells  shifts the one cell to take up the space of two cells,  therefore you are left with an odd cell that is to the right of your table.

Merging Cells using HTML 

Merge rows by adding the code rowspan="(number)" inside the <tb> code of the cell you want to merge

This shifts the cell to the right of the table.  You then need to delete that entire cell.

Unmerging and Adding Cells

When you want to unmerge and add a row back in again you are left with a gap where it should have been.  After some thinking and reading of the HTML I had, I figured how to add a cell back in by writing the codes <td> and </td> below the code for the previous cell.

You can unmerge cells by changing the rowspan code to rowspan"1".  However this leaves you with a blank space where the previous cell was deleted.

Place some x's in the column next to the blank space. This shows where you want to create a new column.

Find the x's to locate where you need to add in a column.  Insert <td> and </td> underneath the previous </td> for the xxxx column

Whilst this may have been very simple problem to solve for HTML savvy people, it was quite the accomplishment for someone who had no idea about HTML two weeks ago!

My Current Events Page

Here is the page I created using HTML.  Please note that it is not entirely finished.  I would like to increase the white cell padding and change the vertical alignment within each cell to be centered.  I am still on my HTML learning journey and will fix it when I figure out how to. Click on the screenshot below to explore my page :) .

I will be using my multi-modal current events page with my learners next week.