That in itself is a tremendous thing!

Leigh Ann
May 12, 2017
3 min read

Anyone ever squall mid sentence in front of your students? No? Just me? I've read Charlotte's Web with several classes, and I can't get through a few of the chapters without crying-happy and sad tears! I have to pass it on to a student to read while I go get myself together! The story is full of real-life friendships, fun, and loss and provides so many opportunities for important conversations, and my heart just sings every time! Reading it again, even though I don't teach third grade, is at the top of my summer to do list, but even before that, I HAD to incorporate it into this school year in the technology lab.

The E.B. White novel teaches me something different each time, but the biggest lesson that I get each read through is that friendship is invaluable. Since June, I have been learning the ins and outs of teaching technology to students as well as presenting professional development sessions to adults; with this comes a huge learning curve! Thankfully, like Wilbur, I've had amazing friends who have showed patience, grace, and assistance in every way possible.

Two ladies, especially, have been my "Charlotte" this past year: Amy and Vickie. Both answered every question and every request with a smile! I stitched this this for Vickie, our Director of Technology because she has had to say this to me on more than one occasion. (Now I know though; always turn it off and on and try again!)

Back to technology: even though I'm not teaching in the third grade classroom anymore , I still wanted to incorporate the story into lab time for those students. I knew that they were studying character traits, so I made a quick template for them to use in PicCollage. We spent a good amount of time at the beginning of the school year setting up their email accounts and learning how to save attachments, so I shared the template through email. After saving the template, students used PicCollage by setting the template as a background and then adding content.

With this activity, students created clues using emojis, text, pictures, and stickers about four different characters from Charlotte's Web. Tricky, non-obvious clues were encouraged, and they could not tell their partner which animals or people they were describing. They added in content to represent their choices, actions, thoughts, voices, and feelings.

Once the games were made, it was time to save the original and play! I initially planned on students making and playing in one day, but they really spent their time creating the perfect clues, so we bumped the playtime to the next session.

There are many ways that you can play, but I wanted to get my students up and moving, so we played Sit, Stay, Stand. To set up, each student uploaded their saved game board in a new PicCollage (so that the original stays preserved for others to play later on if they wish). Students then lined up around the room, and I tell them to go SIT in a chair that is not theirs. They STAY to play one box's clues by typing the character name and their own name and go back to STAND at the front of the room. We repeated until all students have played. They loved it! As soon as they sat, they got to work!

The technology lab can easily be a place where students are sitting and staring at a screen, but with a little tweaking, they are up and on the move. They loved playing this game, and it encouraged students to use their "stay" time wisely because their classmates were finishing up around them. While I don't like to emphasize that school work is a race, it does help make sure that they finish up in the forty minute time period.