During the season around September, Grade 1 has many cross-curricular lessons with the theme, ‘Ocean Animals’, such as learning ocean-related stories in Japanese, drawing animals in Art, Snorkeling as one of the school events, and so on. In Life Skills, after introducing the name and habits of ocean animals through various kinds of activities, I decided to expand their knowledge and skills by making digital picture books using LoiLoNote. Since they have already learned the basic skills of LoiLoNote including drawing, typing, and recording to make digital picture books in Japanese and their own addition stories in Math, I let them try to share slides in pairs to complete their work for this project.
The Benefits of Using LoiLoNote School in this Unit
- It is easy enough for primary students to manage the program by themselves once they learn the basic skills such as drawing, typing, recording and so on.
- The use of iPads motivate students to learn new concepts even if they are a little difficult for them.
- Students can gain many kinds of skills through the process of making LoiLoNote projects. They can learn ICT skills such as typing, drawing, and even cooperation skills with their friends.
Objectives of the Unit
- Learn new LoiLoNote skills, how to send slides to each other to make one complete work at the end.
- Review the names of ocean animals in English and to be able to type them in sentences properly.
- Review some English grammatical skills such as commas, periods, upper/lower cases by typing the sentences.
- Practice how to pronounce the names of ocean animals correctly.
Six Scenes from the Unit
1. Prior lessons
Prior lessons in Japanese, learning and researching ocean animals.
(click to enlarge image)2. Hard-copy picture book
Hard-copy picture book. Each pair gets one. Students make slides based on them.
(click to enlarge image)3. Discussion in pairs
Each pair discusses who will be making which slides. Pairs are made by the teacher for the following reason: one had a higher skill of English/ICT and the other needed support in these areas.
(click to enlarge image)4. Making slides
Students start making slides individually. They copy the sentences in hard-copy picture books which have already been made, and draw the animals using the color specified in the sentences.
(click to enlarge image)5. Helping each other to complete a pair work
When one student finishes half of the slides, he/she can help make slides that the other has not finished yet. After the pair has all the slides ready, one sends slides to other’s account to complete it as one book.
(click to enlarge image)6. Submitted works
Each pair records in a quiet place, final check, then submit.
(click to enlarge image)