Recently, two third grade teachers asked me for help. They have projects planned for students to work on and the topic is landforms; however, they needed me to guide the students into researching and taking notes. So, we used NetTrekker, KidsClick, and FactMonster to locate information about various landforms, using Word to save a bibliography and take notes. The students then put the notes in their own words, using speech bubbles and text boxes in Kerpoof’s “Make a Picture.” So many of the backgrounds available include landforms that third graders were studying: mountains, valleys, plateaus and mesas, river deltas, peninsulas, coasts, plains, etc.
So, the product was simple: Choose a background that represents your landform (or is a close stretch of the imagination), and add text boxes and/or characters with speech bubbles that discuss facts about the landforms. Of course, I allowed some additional “atmosphere” humor, such as dinosaurs shouting “Run for your life! The volcano is erupting!”
Here is a PDF with fairly simplified instructions:
Of course, additional directions would be needed for doing the research as well as using a word processor! I’ve only focused on getting to the finished product.
