A little R & R...

Really wish the R & R referred to rest and relaxation because there is far too little of that in my life!

Today, R & R is for religion and research! I am (unofficially) not teaching this week! Thanks to my school's AMAZING librarian, I get to watch my kiddos in action! (1) I have an completely unreliable voice. Thank you sinus infection from Tartarus <insert sarcasm here>! Could not have timed this project any better! (2)She teaches the kids research strategies and I get to learn with them since this is a new project for me. Yay.

This week we're researching the following religions from around the world:
Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Students are divided into groups and assigned a religion to research. Group members are assigned roles (historian, artist, geographer) and are to become experts on their assigned religion. They get to teach the class next week. Two hands in the air for two weeks of supervision! I really love seeing the kids learn in this manner and be responsible for their own learning....just saying.

This year I've been learning about a TON of Web 2.0 tools. For this project, we're using Glogster. Glogster is in it's simplest form an interactive poster where you can put text, pictures, videos, music and more! There's a lot of freedom to create a glog on any topic/ subject.
FYI: Glogster is free! There is an educator option that teachers can purchase. This option allows the teacher to create secure accounts for students. This allows for students to create accounts without using their e-mail address. I am using the free version for this project.

I'm attaching the example I made for my kids. It's ridiculous simple to use. We're going to introduce it to the kids tomorrow! I hope they love it. I'll post some of their completed projects next week. Just thought I'd give you a sneak peek!



My Glog 

Happy Tuesday!