Integration Idea of the Month — January, 2001

January's theme is "New Beginnings." Keeping this in mind, why not start spring early by beginning a unit of study about plants? Students will create a comic strip to document plant growth and demonstrate their understanding of the progression from seed to full-grown plant.

Curriculum Area: Science

Standards Addressed: National Science Education Standards:

As a result of activities in grades K-4, all students should develop understanding of the characteristics of organisms, life cycles of organisms, and organisms and environments

Technology Skill Level: Advanced

Student Grouping: Cooperative Groups

Materials:

• Computers
• AppleWorks or Microsoft Word
• Digital Camera
• Photo editing software (Photoshop or Photodeluxe)
• Sample comic strips (one for each group of four)

Procedure:

Step 1: Introduce the Concept of a Comic Strip

Break students into groups of four.

Give each group of students a sample comic strip. Have them write down some of the comic strip's attributes. (i.e. there is an element of humor, the story develops chronologically, each scene represents a different moment in time.)

Discuss the attributes with the whole class.

Step 2: Planning the Comic Strips

Each group will plan out five different scenes.

Scene one: must show a new seed

Scene five: must show the adult plant

The seeds should get a chance to "speak" in the comic strip telling the reader what is happening to them.

Step 3: Write the Dialogue for the Speech Bubbles

Once group's plan out their scenes, it is time for them to write out the plant's dialogue for each scene. This can be done on or off the computer. Students can then type and spell check their final text using AppleWorks or Microsoft Word. This text should be saved to the groups' folder for later.

Step 4: Taking the Digital Pictures

This stage will take the longest because student will be taking digital pictures as their plant grows. The pictures that students take should show the growth of their plant. To show the progression, students should take at least one photo per week of plant growth. These photos can be downloaded and saved to the groups' folder as they take them (be sure to label each photo week 1, 2, etc..). A class volunteer would be a great help for this step.

Step 5: Putting it Together

Your students (depending how tech savvy they are), teacher, technology supervisor, or a parent volunteer can do the final step. Paste the digital photos from the camera into an AppleWorks or Word document and add speech balloons to the photos (AppleWorks library or create them using AutoShapes in Word). When that is completed, cut and paste the students’ word-processed text into the speech bubbles, print out the pictures with speech balloons and paste them in order on tractor fed, image writer computer paper, and Laminate the strips for durability and hang around the room.

As an extension, create a slideshow with the pictures and have it timed for one second intervals. This will give the comic strip the appearance of movement. The "comic strip" concept is ideal for anything that occurs in a series.

Return to the January, 2001 Sun Associates News

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