This Week in Media Literacy
Fourth graders have all successfully signed into their Google Accounts for the first time. The majority changed their passwords to something strong and, even better, remembered their passwords! Major accomplishment. Now we’re learning some Google Apps basics.
Fifth graders finished up their first assignment which was to create a “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” Google Slides presentation. Now we’re moving into how to properly format a Google Doc. By the end of the week, they’ll be tired of hearing me say, “Time New Roman, 12 pt. font, double-spaced!” Luckily it’s a standard that will suit them well in High School and College.
Middle Schoolers have all started working on their final projects for the Election unit. Due on Election Day, each student is working the campaign for a real presidential candidate (Clinton or Trump, and in a few classes, Stein). Within their campaigns, they will be creating four pieces to help get the message out about their candidate:
- a campaign video
- a spoken word piece
- infographics
- political art
So far, the preliminary work I’ve seen has been exceptional. Each class has only been working a day or two on this, but I even saw some kids get together during their lunch to plan out their campaign video. Everyone seems way into it and I’m expecting some great things. There are some amazing discussions going on in the Humanities classrooms about the debates. Make sure you check out the 8th grade Humanities blog to see some of it.
Finally, in case you couldn’t make it to curriculum night a few weeks ago, here’s a rundown of what Media Literacy looks like for grades 4 – 8.