How First Grade Writing Can Influence a Global Audience

Business cards with logos and
QR codes makes it easy to find our site!

First graders got a lesson in writing for a global audience and corporate branding this spring. Students in Ms. O'Connor and Mrs. Lamonaca's classes authored their own consumer reviews web sites. This Kid Advisory project is an offshoot of their literacy unit on Opinion writing. Students wrote about books, museums, restaurants, vacation spots, and more for the purpose of steering readers towards some of their favorites.

Children today are growing up in what is often called a "participatory culture." They have access to technology that allows them to share their ideas and perspectives with people all around the world. For example, Think YouTube. Think Instagram. The youngest audience members may be passive viewers today. But how long before they become active participants? Liking. Commenting. Sharing. Creating. Uploading.

Ms. O'Connor's class consumer
reviews site.

This is a powerful digital literacy and communications opportunity that comes with tremendous responsibility. But with the proper learning experiences and guidance from teachers (and parents) even first graders can begin to grasp how to craft their message in order to reach and influence so many people. This idea of connecting with an authentic audience becomes more clear when they see their words on a web site and learn that this web site can be seen by anyone -- in the world!

This Kid Advisory project also included a marketing element and the concept of branding. We learned that before our audience could trust and value our opinions they needed to know who we are. In Mrs. Lamonaca's class we created an identity that was packaged in a name, logo, and slogan. We brainstormed and ultimately riffed off the name Yelp. We became Snelp as in-- we were told-- "It's like Yelp, but it's information in a snap." That made total sense. "Snelp -- it's as easy as a snap," became our slogan. So then we needed a logo. An icon. An animal. We brainstormed.

Logos need to be appealing and
recognizable. Our crab is friendly.

What snaps? We searched through our bins of books. Alligators. Crabs. Turtles. Crabs can snap with pincers, almost like people can snap with their fingers. Let's go with crabs. Now let's draw a logo on Seesaw, our online journal so we can look at everyone's contributions. Ultimately, we chose Saki's crab. Cute. Soft features. Curly antennae. Pincers easy to see, non-threatening, and ready to snap!

When Ms. O'Connor and Mrs. Lamonaca held their first publishing celebration, so many guests showed up. The entire first grade, their buddy classes, Dr. Houseknecht, Mr. Yang, and even Mrs. Shain, the Assistant Superintendent. There's still a minor glitch in the web site that needs to be fixed. Our pages won't take public comments. That'll change soon we hope. We've had many readers online and offline, but once we get commenting enabled, as our web sites reach an audience far and wide, we hope to hear back from them, so we know how far and how wide.

Assistant Superintendent Lynne Shain checks out
our first grade Kid Advisory review sites.

Piece by Piece: Best Summer Vacation without WIFI Ever!

Design challenges with Plus Plus

For an entire week, my children indulged in activities that didn't rely on electricity or WIFI. It wasn't a form of punishment or an organized "family values" challenge (see Screen Free week). It was a week in the Adirondacks. When they weren't discovering new ways to jump in a lake or capture little frogs, they played card games (Crazy 8s, Go Fish, etc), Pixie Sticks, Jenga, but there was something new to me that was just so mind-blowing in its intellectual absorption and simplicity.

Nothing more mesmerizing than
watching your kids being mesmerized.

They are called Plus Plus puzzle pieces made by a company in Denmark. Each piece is small enough to sit comfortably on your fingertip and is made of flexible plastic. Since the sets do not come with directions, the blueprint is truly in the hands of builder. But they have the same allure of Lego bricks, begging to be pieced together. Try connecting two pieces. And I defy you to not attach a third, fourth, and so on.

The activity easily promotes fine motor development, hand eye coordination, pattern recognition, interpersonal skills since builders often ask for feedback, and spatial reasoning. Research has indicated that children who play puzzles are more likely to develop an interest in the STEM fields.

My kids would sit for lengthy sessions, manipulating the Plus Plus pieces into place in their best efforts to match the design they envisioned. There's nothing more mesmerizing than watching your children being mesmerized. I'm not sure if I could've stopped them if I waved a WIFI enabled iPad in front of them. Oh sure, now that we're back from the Adirondacks, they do have their WIFI devices again, but they're still building with Plus Plus keeping their fingers dexterous and persistent and their imaginations lively.

From Wondering to Researching to Teaching

Wondering topics ranged from
supernovas, to sustainable energy, to
Sesame Street.

     Children come to school each day with that built-in sense of wonder. Classroom teachers are challenged to find ways to sharpen their skills for finding answers to the things they wonder about. These essential research skills, whether asking targeted questions, synthesizing ideas, or educating an audience, will serve them well in school and life. Mrs. Blackley challenged her 5th grade students to wonder about anything and write a short narrative that incorporated their findings. And while their writings were fascinating reads in themselves, the impact is in the videos they produced and then published to the Internet, which will allow them to reach and teach a broader and, potentially, global audience.
     So as a class, we discussed the video medium and how the spoken words, or script, provide information, often research findings, that support the visuals. The video script is a different style of writing compared with their expository pieces. Once we had a rough script, we developed a visual storyboard using Google Slides.
     The storyboard is our pre-production plan for editing in iMovie. Students recorded their narration using Vocaroo, a web based tool, downloaded mp3, picture, and video files into iMovie, and after one or two editing lessons, were on their way. The results were impressive. But as I always tell students, the most informative and engaging videos begin with an informative and engaging script. The foundation of the video has to be a great story. Otherwise, the video becomes Grandpa's slideshow of Yellowstone Park and your audience will yawn and lean towards the door. As I often tell my students, when it comes to making videos, the easiest thing to do is make a bad one. Our goal was to make videos that engaged and informed an audience and left them begging to see it again and again. I believe we accomplished that. Check out Manami's fantastic video production as well as her storyboard. It's unfathomable that when the year began, she hardly spoke English :)