Tour Builder for Collaborative Writing

In Room 311, we are taking a journey around the world in search of 10 Mystery locations! (See Journey North Mystery Class Project.) On our journey, we are discovering so much about latitude and longitude and using tools such as My Maps and Tour Builder.

As we worked on latitude, we wrote a class story about the stops we would make if we strapped on a new invention called Latitude Shoes. What would it be like to travel around the world at our latitude in 24 hours? What would we see?

Each team of students explored and wrote about a location on or near 33 degrees latitude. A couple teams took side journeys a bit off the approximate latitude, but they enjoyed exploring the world and writing their piece of the story.

Check out our story on Tour Builder. Click Here
(The tour is best viewed in 3D with a browser with Google Earth installed.)

A preview:

Students as Authors

Student Created Audio Books

You know how kids love to be read to? And they love to draw? And they love technology? Well, here is a combination of all three that inspired my kids to add more detail to their own writing and keep writing!

Students wrote their revised and edited stories into these cute little booklets. And you're thinking - "So what? Everyone does that."  "That's nice. I never thought of that before."

After writing, they illustrated their stories. Then, it got interesting! The students read and recorded their stories on a web based audio program called Vocaroo.com. It's a free, very simple website with one button "click to record" and "stop". Then save. The site has a link when you save which will automatically create a QR Code. We printed the QR Code, glued it into the book and now had a new audio book for our listening center. 

The amazing thing was that, while listening to each others stories in the listening center, even my reluctant writers wanted to write more and more. 

Next year, I will have the kids branch out to writing and recording  non-fiction and much more!

If you'd like a copy of my booklet pages, you can get them from TPT.

Booklet with Primary Lines

Booklet with Upper Grade Solid Lines

Here is a post from Teresa at Fun in K/1 who uses Vocaroo and has a great graphic with instructions for students in creating the recording and QR code. 
http://www.funink1.com/2013/07/qr-codes-with-audio.html