Laura Girr, Riverton Elementary School, ME, USA, used LNS to help her students learn to think and express themselves logically.
Outline of the Class
Laura’s first grade students used LNS in their procedural writing unit in which they were tasked with writing their own “How To” digital multimedia book explaining how to make a gingerbread house.
First, Laura worked with the whole class on some key explanation skills such as sequencing words (e.g. first, then, next, last, etc.). She also underlined the importance of giving clear and easy-to-understand instructions and made it a rule to explain only one step per slide/Card.
Then, students took photographs and made records of the various steps while creating and decorating their gingerbread houses. Next, they imported the photographs into LNS as “stills” on Image Cards and put them in the correct order. Last, they added colorful text and recorded voiceovers with the instructions. (You’ll notice we also followed Laura’s advice about sequencing words here!)
Voice from the Classroom
It can be difficult to come up with fun and interesting - and therefore, effective - ways to teach higher-level intellectual and academic skills such as logical thinking and writing skills to such young students, but Laura found a way to do just that. The hands-on, interactive task reinforced the theoretical and intellectual component of the lesson, enabling students to achieve the learning goals without even really noticing they were doing so.
In particular, Laura values LNS’s potential to generate an individualized or personalized learning environment since
“[it] allows every student to work at his or her level to demonstrate his or her learning.” Students completed the task to a high level and also enjoyed devouring their creations once they were done!
