Composting Projects

Our second grade students have been learning all about earth science for the past month or so. We have learned a lot about soil, rocks, decomposers, and natural resources. As part of this science unit, students learned a lot about composting. Keysor already has a great composting program in the cafeteria (thanks to last year's second-grade leaders). This year we gave our students the job to teach a group who doesn't know about composting. They could choose younger students (mainly kindergartners, since they have not been composting in the cafeteria yet), parents, or the Kirkwood community. They had to then create a project to teach this group something about composting.

We gave students a list of possible products, such as posters, brochures, a learning activity, a books, etc, and we also told them they could come up with their own ideas. Because our class has iPads, students had many choices in how to create a project.  Many kids chose to use their iPads to do some more research on composting, while others created something using their iPads. Some kids chose not to use their iPads at all.

Several groups of students chose to create books about composting. One group created their book completely in Notability- the text and illustrations. One students typed her text on her iPad, but then she printed it to draw the illustrations by hand. Another group created their book completely by hand on paper, but they used a dictionary app to help them edit their spelling. Even though they all chose different ways to create their books, through the technique of scanning, we were able to share all of their books with their classmates through iBooks. Every student in the class could have their own copy of the book, without having to print them. The student authors were very excited to share their books digitally (as was I for figuring this out).

I am very impressed with their final products. Here are some of them: