During Autumn, around the time of Halloween, our fifth grade students typically meet with first grade students to decorate a pumpkin together. This year, however, we thought we would add a twist. In addition to decorating a pumpkin, we had our fifth and first grade student pairs recreate their pumpkin in Keynote and tell us a story about it.
The recreation part was done using a template (attached below) from the great Eric Curts, author and creator of the Control Alt Achieve website (https://www.controlaltachieve.com/) and well known Technology Integrationist. His version was a Google Slide that I downloaded as a PowerPoint file and converted to Keynote. With a little tweaking, and the power of Keynote, students could now decorate their digital pumpkins by copy/pasting the images on the slides (as Eric had intended), and/or using the drawing and shape tools that Keynote offers. Also, students could tell their Jack-O-Lantern stories by recording their voice, video, live video, hand writing, or typing. Keynote certainly allowed this to be a powerful choice and voice activity.
Now, students not only did an engaging activity with their fifth or first grade buddies, but they also learned some new technology skills and practiced showcasing their knowledge of the elements of story telling.
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