I’m happy to present our final group of science videos created this week. The students worked long and hard in their groups to write their scripts and develop their explanations to create these videos using the model inspired by CommonCraft. We hope you enjoy them. Please leave us a comment to tell us what you think.

It’s The Rock Cycle by Troy, Rachel and Frankie

It’s Raining Weather by Jack, Katie and Taylor

Weathering and Erosion by Olivia, Eric, Seth and Ray

It’s Raining (The Water Cycle) by Miles, Madison and Grace

Saving The Earth (Conservation) by Kyle, Santiago, Elle and Maria

Sensational Soil by Ben, Dario and Nick

I’ve always loved the way the folks at CommonCraft, with their “In Plain English” series, use paper cut-outs to give simple explanations about not-so-simple things. The CommonCraft-like videos we created a few weeks ago were created by my 3rd block class. They were all on the same topic, The Reason For The Seasons. They did a great job on the videos and learned a lot about their topic in the process of creating their videos.

After going through the process with that class, I decided to let my 1st and 2nd block do similar projects, but this time gave each group a different topic that basically covered the most difficult ideas from this year’s science curriculum.

I’m also very excited to announce that Lee LeFever from CommonCraft has agreed to videoconference with my class next week. Lee and his wife, Sachi, comprise the entire company of CommonCraft and produce all their own videos from start to finish. My students will have the unique opportunity to “meet” and ask questions of Lee and they are already generating their questions.

So here are the latest videos. I will post them as they are created. I hope you enjoy them. Please leave a comment.

How Land Features Affect The Water Cycle by Alayna, Brett and Carly.

It’s Rocktastic by Jordana, Noah, Hannah and Kim

What Are Mineral Resources? by Gabby, Rachel and Julianna

Wild Weather by Lilly, Jordan and Jessica

The Water Cycle by Ryan, Raegan and Isabella

Spoil The Soil (the role of soil) by Julia, Ethan and Brooke

Weathering and Erosion By Elly, Ashley and Jenna

In class we are studying the solar system and the students have been engaged in labs and activities to explore the Reason for The Seasons. One of my classes has been working on creating short videos (like CommonCraft) to explain why we have seasons. Here they are:

By Ben, Maya and Eriel

By Justin, Remi and Gadiel

By Rishi, Sahil and Zack

By Colin, Akshay and Jack

by Sam, Griffin and Michael

by Katie, Sarah and Jonathan

by Maria, Alec and Leo

On April 14, my students (along with thousands of others around the world) participated in an online webinar with Philippe Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau. His message to our youth of taking care to preserve and restore our world’s oceans was very encouraging.

With the 40th anniversary of Earth Day coming up next week, I was happy to hear that Discovery Education would be hosting a webinar where Philippe would speak directly to our students. I’ve heard Philippe speak (I’ve met him twice before) and I know he is very engaging, so I was really excited to make this an interesting experience for my 4th graders.

I prepared my students for this by downloading Ocean’s Deadliest from Discovery Streaming (if you are a subscriber, just click the Discovery Streaming link, log in and you will be brought to the video). As we watched Philippe on this exciting documentary, we got a good sense of Philippe’s mission. It was good for the students to have a sense of connection with Philippe prior to the webinar.

While Philippe spoke about the oceans, overfishing, pollution and simple changes we can all make to create a positive change, he shared some photos and videos. My students recognized much of what he shared from the documentary. It was familiar and made sense to them. There was also the backchannel scrolling up on the sidebar. (It was fascinating to watch how well the students attended to the chat as well as to what Philippe was sharing.)

Later that evening, I noticed that one of my students, Julia, blogged about the webinar. Reading her post was such a heart-warming, proud moment for me because it was unprompted. Julia is one of my best writers and brilliant thinkers. If you read her post and see what she came up with, you will see why.

Thanks to Philippe for sharing his message in such a friendly, down-to-earth manner. Thanks also to Discovery for hosting the webinar. Special thanks to Julia for an awesome blogpost!