For the first time this school year, we partnered up with 4KM and 4KJ in Australia to work on a project. We’ve worked with them in previous years on projects such as our Storybirds and the Tale Trail. This year we’ve teamed up to collaborate on a fun monster-themed project.
Here’s how our project worked:
- Students from Mr. Avery’s class were paired up with students from 4KM and 4KJ.
- All students drew a picture of a monster.
- Next, the students wrote a detailed description of their monster.
- The two classes swapped their writing (but didn’t swap pictures).
- The student’s had to draw their partner’s monster using the detail written in the description.
- We then compared the original drawing the the drawing our partner made using the writing!
It was really interesting to see the results. Some of the drawings were pretty close and some of them not so much. It definitely taught us that detail in our writing is important. Writing creates an image in your mind and in the mind of others so the more detail you can add to it, the better you can share how you imagine things with others.
Take a look at our Prezi below. You’ll be able to see our writing, our original images (always on the left) and then the drawings that our partners in 4KM/4KJ did of our writing. You can make the Prezi full screen by clicking the button in the bottom right hand corner. You can then scroll through by using the arrows on the bottom of the presentation or autoplay it by clicking the play button with the stopwatch behind it.
If you’d like to see our attempt at drawing 4KM and 4KJ’s monsters as well as their original writing and monsters, you can do so by clicking here. Also, since Halloween isn’t something that’s commonly celebrated in Australia, they had some questions for people who do celebrate it. You can answer their questions by clicking here. Lastly, if you’d like to see the monster drawings that students from our class did last year when we completed this project with Mr. Salsich’s class, click here.
Thank you so much to 4KM and 4KJ for working with us on this project. We had so much fun on it and we hope you enjoyed our monsters!
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Dear Mr. Avery,
It is really cool that we partnered with kids in 4KM and 4KJ. I noticed that some drawings are a lot alike and some are very different. I think everyone did really well on the monsters!
From,
Kaylee
Dear Mr. Avery,
I enjoyed the new math videos. I watched these at my house yesterday and now I even understand adding mixed numbers more!
Sincerely,
Joe M.
Dear Mr. Avery,
I think descriptive writing is important because they tell you more than just broad details they also tell you small but important details. Doing the monster project was really fun.
Sincerely,
Heston H. 😈
Dear Mr. Avery,
I loved taking part in the global monster project. I think the description is very important because if you don’t make it really accurate the other person might draw it wrong. I think drawing it was the funnest part of the whole thing, even though in some places it was hard to draw. This was the funnest project all year!
Sincerely,
Marshall
Dear Mr Avery and class,
First of all what a great post! I loved doing the monster global project that we did. I did the drawing by myself I was partners with Ally P in your class,our monsters was kind of simlar. I really enjoyed it, I wish we could do it again, when ally P tried to do my picture they ended up really simlar.
I have to go now
from your blogging buddy
shakira
P.S I’m from 4KM and 4KJ also you can check out my blog here is the address http://shakirasblog.global2.vic.edu.au
Dear Mr Avery and class,
We saw the Prezi and we really enjoyed compering the pictures. They all looked quite similar!
My monster was delve dancer on our blog post they ended up similar, Shakira’s monster was called the vampire kitten it also ended up really similar!
It was a great global project and if your craftie this would be for you! 🙂 😉
Go to go,
Shakira and Liv
Dear Liv Y.,
I was paired up with you for the monster writing and it was a lot of fun. What did you think about it? Did you like it?
Sincerely,
Olivia Y.
Dear Mr. Avery and students,
Congratulations! These examples of monsters and drawings are terrific! I love how you integrated art, writing, math and creativity in this global collaborative project.
I also think that your students now understand what authors and illustrators experience. When an author writes a book, generally speaking, they do not ever talk to the illustrator of their book. The editor does the talking back and forth, but rarely do the authors and illustrators communicate directly.
The exception is when an author is also the illustrator, or when they already have an established illustrator. There are brother/sister teams like in the case of the Babymouse series.
Anyway, this is a great project as always!
From,
Mrs. Hembree
Hello, Mr. Avery:
I’m Hsu-Wan Chen from Taiwan, a graduate school student at National Taiwan Normal University. Currently I’m writing my master thesis which is entitled Applying Social Networking Sites to Teaching and Learning: from Teachers’ Perspective. Right now I’m looking for school teachers to be interviewed with their experiences of using social networking sites for educational purpose. Earlier today I came across this blog and I totally got inspired. I think you would be able to give my refreshing thoughts too. If it is so, I would like to have a skype interview with you. Surely I will send you the interview protocol in advance and the interview protocol and this interview will take about 20 minutes. Please let me know and feel free to contact me at: chenshuwan@gmail.com. I really appreciate your help!
Regards,
Hsu-Wan Chen
Dear Mr Avery and class,
Thank you so much for working on this project with us! I remember when Mr Avery did this project with Mr Salsich’s class last year. It sounded like so much fun so I was excited to give it a try this year.
All the students in 4KM and 4KJ loved working on their own pictures/writing as well as drawing your monsters.
While some of the similarities between the monsters were not quite right, so many of them were great! Some students produced really high quality writing and this allowed their partner to draw a monster that looked very similar to the original.
What a shame we can’t skype to talk about the project. Did you know 8am your time is 11pm our time? That won’t really work!
I hope we get to work on many more projects together.
Your friend in Australia,
Mrs M☀rris
Dear Mr Avery and Class,
Hi, I’m Georgia from 4KM and 4KJ! Working on the project with you was extremely fun!
I was partners with Ethan from 4KM and partners with Joesph M from your class.
Your new friend down under,
Georgia (4KM) 😆
Dear Mr Avery
I remember doing that project last year. It was so fun. Hopefuly u keep doing this project. I will come and visit you soon!
From
Alli W. and Emma W.