Activities

This activity offers a good framework for introducing and working with image-editing programs. In it, kids work in pairs to take pictures of two people, import them into a photo-editing application like PhotoShop, and combine them to create an image of the two people talking to each other with comic book-style word balloons.

Students will create a class book. Students will use visual mapping to brainstorm the theme of the book. Each student will create a page in the book.

This lesson introduces concepts of animation and visual storytelling through the production of a zoetrope. Kids also have a chance to practice cooperative interaction, reading and writing.

When we read a book, we're always just looking at two pages at a time. A panel book makes it easy to focus on each page individually and in any order.

To create a panel book, you disassemble a book into its individual pages. One of the main uses for a panel book is to help introduce a storyboarding activity or prepare for a multimedia, animation, or video project. You can also use it for reading aloud when you want to more closely examine and discuss issues of sequence, graphics and storytelling.

In our media-saturated world, kids are constantly bombarded by messages, images, opinions and ideas. Add the Internet, Web, email and wireless devices into the mix, and it's difficult for any of us to escape the information—and misinformation—glut.

Once you've introduced the basic compositional forms of drawing, this is a fun activity for taking the next step. It's also a good community-building activity and an excellent step toward preparing children for drawing on the computer. In this activity you and the kids will draw simple shapes to copy.

There's no better way to learn than by talking to people. Even if you're not a reporter, everyone needs good interviewing skills, whether it's to find the answer to a question or to get a job. Interviewing isn't something you can just rush into, however. Kids need preparation, practice and coaching.

Many books, songs and poems offer wonderful patterns for moving writing beyond simple sentences and bringing it closer to children's personal lives. Below are two examples that use the same techniques as other pattern writing activities to move the kids to new levels of sophistication and provide a foundation for a better understanding of storytelling.

"Pattern writing" or "sentence transformation" activities are all based on identifying and repeating sentence patterns. They are particularly useful for teaching writing, sentence structure and parts of speech. A

Four things are most important in pattern writing:

DESCRIPTION: This winter we made quilts and delivered them to the sick children at the Inova Fairfax Hospital. We used the computer to look up the website for Project Linus, http://projectlinus.org. It's an organization that collects quilts and blankets for the children.