Activities

Here you will find all of the activities included in the I Write It, You Picture It! project. In addition, you will be given a time frame for when all activities, from the curriculum and the technology aspect, are to be completed.

Project Preperation

Activities

• Contact Timm Green by Oct. 19th, 2007 with the following information: Name, school, number of students participating, and whether or not you are on pace with the writing curriculum.
• After confirmation from me that you will be participating, you must create a Wikispaces account so that you may access the file sharing website for this project. Creating an account is simple and only requires a valid email address. Once you are registered, you may request to join the TPGREEN wikispace. Once you have joined, you will be entered in as an Administrator so you have access to edit the Wikispace if need be.
• Be prepared to deal with bumps in the road, while maintaining the course!
• Exchange a "get to know you" email with your corresponding teacher. This will facilitate a better learning/collaboration community between the two classes. Be creative, you'd be amazed at what you can teach someone about yourself!
• Something you may want to try is teaching your students how to use the Wikispaces so that they may be involved in the uploading and downloading of files under adult supervision. Any students who are capable of this, should be since this project may also teach valuable Internet skills at the same time as their reading and writing skills.
• Another consideration may be a brief lesson on how to use a scanner, so that students may also participate in the digitizing process. The more the students' hands are on the technology, the more excited they will be about completing this project.

Week 1: Prewriting and Drafting

Activities

• Send an email to your corresponding teacher to confirm that the project is in fact beginning, and to settle any issues you may have.
• The teacher will complete the writing lesson on descriptive essays. This entire lesson is scheduled to take place over two weeks. The first week will consist of the introduction of descriptive essays by the teacher.
• Students will prewrite and draft their descriptive essays during both Blue Band and Workshop time for those students needing additional time and help. Essays should be typed during class and computer lab time.
• By Friday afternoon, under the supervision of an adult, students will have uploaded their document to Wikispaces so that collaboration between students may start taking place the beginning of week 2. If a student is unable to do so, the teacher will have that responsibility. Each word document should be named in this way: TEACHER LAST NAME_STUDENT LASTNAME.doc. For example, if the teacher is Mr. Green and the student's name is Brian Ridgeway, his essay would be saved in MS Word under the name Green_Ridgeway.doc.
• When all of the files have been uploaded from your class, send your corresponding teacher an email letting them know as well. If any students have not posted due to absence or any other reason, include this in the email.

Week 2: Initial Illustrations

Activities

• In the beginning of the week, the teacher/and or students will be responsible for downloading the other classes essays from our Wikispaces and printing them or saving them on the computer to read. I strongly suggest printing each so that students may have a copy with them while creating their illustration. The earlier in the week this takes place, the longer students will have to work on their initial visualizations of their partners essay.
• Students will complete their illustrations throughout the week, including Blue band and workshop time if necessary. Remember, we are not assessing the students ability to draw, so the illustrations do not need to be perfect, or judged to the scale they may be in an art class.
• As students finish their illustrations, they should be scanned onto the computer. Once they are scanned, students should insert their drawing into the other students essay in MS Word. These documents should be saved in the following format(using the earlier example file still): Green_Ridgeway_illustrated.doc. This way anyone accessing files on Wikispace will be able to differentiate between the uploaded files.
• Finally, the teacher will upload all of the renamed files back to the Wikispaces so the author may access their newly illustrated first draft the following week.

Week 3: Revisions, Publishing, and Final Illustrations

Activities

• Students/and or teachers will then download their illustrated essays for review. After they have been downloaded(verified through teacher to teacher email), each teacher may delete their classes original upload from the Wikispace in order to prevent confusion due to a large number of files on the Wikispace. Then, print out each students illustrated essay so that they may see both their essay and partner's illustration together. Based on their partner's illustration, the author will move into the revision stage of the writing process.
• The teacher will then review/reemphasize the use of specific words through various activities, including this descriptive writing website. Have students work on them during their Blue band, including Workshop for those students needing additional, one on one help.
• The authors will then add more specific words, such as frightened instead of scared, filled with joy instead of happy, puzzled instead of confused, in order to paint a more clear picture of the setting, action, and feelings in their essays. Revisions must be made to the word document and saved with the file name: Green_Ridgeway_revised.doc.
• Teachers and/or students will then upload the newly renamed files to the Wikispace by Wednesday.
• Once all the files have been uploaded, teachers and/or students will download the other classes revised work and distribute them to the same student who had each essay earlier. Students will then create new illustrations that reflect the changes that have been made to the essay. Again, these pictures must be scanned and inserted into the corresponding essay. The file should be renamed: Green_Ridgeway_final.doc and uploaded one final time to Wikispaces.
• Finally, teachers may download their students final essays, printing a copy for each student as well as themselves for assessing.

Assessment

• Using the expository writing rubric from the AACPS Writing to assess the writing portion of the project.
• Have the students complete an ungraded, quick write which includes their feelings on this project. Any input received from students can only make this project stronger in the future.
• When the project is finished, please write a short, self reflection of your thoughts on this project, including both positive and negative experiences. Anything you feel that should be added or taken away from this project would be greatly appreciated so that we may hone this project for future years. If you could please save this in an MS Word document and upload it to the Wikispace within a week of completing the project, it would be appreciated.
• Finally, please share this experience with the rest of your staff, including your administration. Most teachers involved in a project like this already understand the power of technology within teaching, and good examples of it's use are always strong messages to school leadership.
• Please keep your online calendar clean this time next year, we would love your participation again as we try to grow this project even further next year!
• Proudly display the work your students created with their collaborators for all to see in the school. There is no reason a project like this cannot be expanded and modified to fit the needs of any grade level or curriculum.