We are about to finish up our unit on diseases and healthy living habits in health. One lesson in the unit involved having the 3rd graders collect data about how germs are spread in different areas around school and design posters to advertise ways you can stop those germs from spreading. Stacy Robison's 5th graders helped us design our posters using Pic Collage. Stacy shared the planning sheet she had used with the 5th graders during their genre study. I tweaked that form to fit our poster project and when the 5th graders joined us for our first meeting, they helped us create a catch phrase for our healthy habits, explain the steps or reasons for practicing these habits, come up with picture ideas, and then create a mock-up design for the poster.
The following morning, we used our media time with Mrs. Ensor to work on the posters. It was amazing to watch the interaction between the 5th and 3rd graders! The 5th graders were great about showing the 3rd graders the features of Pic Collage but letting my students actually be in control of the iPad most of the time. My 3rd graders loved learning from their big friends and the one-on-one experience was much more effective and manageable than if I had to teach all 18 students the program myself.
The following morning, we used our media time with Mrs. Ensor to work on the posters. It was amazing to watch the interaction between the 5th and 3rd graders! The 5th graders were great about showing the 3rd graders the features of Pic Collage but letting my students actually be in control of the iPad most of the time. My 3rd graders loved learning from their big friends and the one-on-one experience was much more effective and manageable than if I had to teach all 18 students the program myself.
We spent about 3 1/2 hours total on this project. I wish we had taken one more class period to look at the posters and check for capital letters/spelling, discuss background/font color choices, position of catch phrases, and layout design. Some partnerships needed the opportunity to compare posters and make revisions to their own.