Fairy Tale Cyber Dictionary

Jessamyn,

The Fairy Tale/Folk Tale Cyber Dictionary project look like a interesting starter project for your kids. The topics are familiar and attractive to students, and the project has several methods of output for the kids' work: puzzles, animation, slideshows, and the re-telling. The project has a complete published rubric that kids can understand. One part you could extend on your own would be to contact one or more of the other teachers in the project and share kid reactions and evaluations. They would take the project a step further beyond displaying kid work, and give the kids an interactive role. If the kids also had blogs, this would be wonderful writing/sharing material as well. Podcasting would fit in perfectly also! Among your supplies and items, I would suggest the free program called Photostory. it allows you to take photos of your kids in actions or of their work, then to create a short video. This is a free program.

Also, this project reminds me a little bit of Voices of the the World (VOTW). You might like to see some of the examples here on this project wiki site -- http://votw.wikispaces.com/.

-- Terry

Hi Jess, What a cool project! This sounds like something my master teacher would want to do next year. She always does a fairy tale unit and she also teaches her children how to use both Kid Pix and the Microsoft Paint program. This seems like a project that fits comfortably and easily into the curriculum. I can definitely see you doing this next year! Do you think Heather would like this idea too?

Jess,

The project that you found seems like a great way to incorporate something new into a theme that you are already familiar with and have developed some meaningful lessons for. It also seems age appropriate. I like how the dictionaries are published online so that your children feel that their work has a purpose. I agree with Terry that it is a nice introduction to using the internet for projects, and that there are many ways you could expand upon this project. Maybe you could have the dictionary come alive a little bit by having a clip of the children’s voices as they read their entries for each letter, in a slideshow format. Aside from being plain adorable, it could be a nice segway into podcasting. It doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult to arrange either.

As I was reading more about your idea I wondered a few things about the project… How might you choose who is responsible for what letter? Should each child try to make up their own full dictionary and then you choose which of their ideas and drawings make it to the online version? I wonder how fairness might come into play during this project and how those decisions would be made. I know first graders are very concerned with fairness!

Hey Jess, This sounds like a great idea... If your students are already reading and writing fairytales this is the perfect supplemental project. It also sounds like you would be able to complete multiple "cyber dictionaries" whenever you would see fit. How do these dictionaries get shared? Is this something that can be made into a physical product? I hope you get to try this in you class, please keep me posted maybe I can pass it along to my first grade teachers.

Jess,

Isn't the wed great for find to ideas, and ways to integrate and supplement new ideas into an existing curriculum. Sometime some of the activity are unrealistic or to time consuming. However your project works great because it fits into your curriculum, and follows the standards.

• My question is how will this book look? Hopefully you will add a fairy tale art element into its design.