The Woes of Student Multimedia Presentations

Why do my students love the  

so much?

I'll tell ya why, it's the same reason they love to have a million different types of font in their multimedia presentations.  

They want to drive me insane.

Oh, and it's not just the kids who love the Fancy Font. Full grown adults like to snaz up their .ppts with them too, maybe even with several different variations for our viewing pleasure.

It's an absolute crime that Powerpoint allows for words to drop from the PowerPoint heavens, one letter at time, in Edwardian Script ITC. A crime against teacher sanity. 

Ridiculous.  How is it in 2015, training professionals are still creating animated PowerPoint presentations with mind numbing animations? I'm going to reach a bit and claim that we, as a sophisticated group of teachers, are no longer impressed with the Fancy Font or the animated clip art from the Microsoft Gallery.  It's painful to watch and stop making us do it!

Therefore, we have the NO FANCY FONT rule in my classroom. As a result, I am attempting to establish a set of guidelines to help my students create multimedia products that are effective AND aesthetically appealing.  Not just fancy.

I created this infographic at piktochart.com (for free) to hopefully help give my class some guidelines for classroom multimedia presentations that aren't cluttered with ridiculous fonts, clip art or animations.




I tirelessly combed the internet for a definitive source on providing students with guidelines for multimedia presentations. But in the end, I had to do it myself. Like most things.


I just had to "Git 'er done," as we sophisticates like to say.

IMS Bove

Memorizing the Gettysburg Address

Again, my students have inspired me. 
My heart swells. 
My 6th grade students memorized the Gettysburg Address, 

and so did I.

Well, I did, but I messed up on about 8 words (out of 271). Also, I needed a kick start at two points during my recitation, which my students carefully recorded when I allowed them to assess my recitation. 

But enough about me, all 13 of my 6th grade students recited the Gettysburg Address from memory after studying it for 3 weeks, all with 95%-98% accuracy. I have a 5th/6th combination class, my 5th graders memorized the Preamble. In fact our entire 5th grade team of 90 students memorized the Preamble with 99%-100% accuracy (see my blog here about the Preamble).  But even more amazing our 6th grade team of 76 students attempted the feat of memorizing the Gettysburg Address.  Most of them accomplishing the task with only a handful of students who fell short of the goal.

When we first set forth on this task, I felt trepidatious.  I was asking my students to attempt a feat I myself had not attained. Therefore, I made a promise that I would memorize and recite the address as well.

Before starting, in collaborative groups, students completed a self guided close reading using the Icons of Depth and Complexity. Directions on how to complete this lesson is available on my blog, and the templates are available for free at my TPT store: IMS Bove.

FREE!

I gave my students time to work on memorizing their passages during Daily 5 each day and provided self assessment close worksheets for morning work. 
This bundle is available at my TPT store.

Another GREAT resource is the Gettysburg Address available for free download, a song we listened to several times, by the Bonus Point Band. Here is their free audio download of the song. Also here is the free download of their video.

Their Youtube video is available here:

I am so proud of my students, and I am inspired.

IMS Bove