Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
I required registration for this program, because there is a limited amount of space where we held it. Also, I decided partway through the planning that we would be using laptops, and my library only owns twelve laptops.
As of yesterday, the registration was full at twelve participants plus two on the waiting list. Ten of the registered kids showed up, plus four that I was not expecting. Even though two were without laptops, there were chairs for everyone so I invited them all inside.
Our first activity was on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's website Eduplace, and was basically an online version of MadLibs called Wacky Web Tales. With two sets of siblings sharing a laptop, I challenged the kids to find the website and then fill out the tale entitled "The Box." Since we used this as an ice breaker activity, I told them that their own name had to appear somewhere in their tale. They had 15 minutes to fill it out, then we went around and shared.
For the rest of the session, I let them work on their choice of two websites: Story Jumper or Storyboard That. Story Jumper presented the unexpected complication of needing users under 12 to go through a long and involved process to get parent permission to use the website, so most of the kids ended up on Storyboard That for today. They had a great time making their own comic strips, and exploring the website. Here is my example strip that I created on Storyboard That:
I feel that it's important to let tweens and even older elementary schoolers explore the internet in an only somewhat structured environment. This way their activity can still be monitored, but they figure out how to browse and make things happen on their own. I originally had a more regimented lesson plan for today, but because it was the first session, I thought it would be fun for them to look at character and setting options without putting too much pressure on the session.
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