First Weeks in Review + Dungeon Crawl!

PBS Learning Media Storyboard for new school year

Friday and gave Chase a test and storyboard assignment this morning to review what we've learned so far.  I made my own storyboard to highlight a few of the things.  Just a good way to keep track of what we've learned.  Don't see anyway to embed these.  It is similar to the Glogster posters, though those you can embed.  However, Glogs take a long time to load, I think it is all flash or something.  This could also be used as a presentation for projects.  Though Windows 10 has a built in app that might work better.  It's called Sway.  I'll have to play around with it a bit to see how useful it would be.  The storyboards are simple, and that can be good enough.

In the afternoon, we did our first dungeon crawl.  Only made it to the first room of the Old Aqueducts, though.  We had a random encounter with 4 tiny scorpions and they kicked our butts because we couldn't hit them!  Hahaha.  Well, after Kai (Chase's fighter) fell into a floor trap that nearly killed him, we took on a huuuuge centipede and destroyed it.  Then there was lewts.  Emberlyn (my pirate/rogue) found some gold and split it (evenly, of course! ---- not!) and Kai found a glowing gem and a cool sword.  Our NPC, Asila, a second year Healer student, found a small silver ring.

That is as far as we got, had to have them take a short rest...  Guess we're combining 3.5 and 5 rules to try to simplify things.  Rather than make us spend the night in the dungeon when it should really take one night only.  We're exploring a tunnel under our school and they would probably have to send a search party after us if us first years didn't make it back.  But hey, we did sign the waivers that adventurer's school could mean our deaths!

Chase has no problem solving math problems on the fly as he rolls his saves and attacks.  He did well with the roleplay part, with a character afraid of bugs and our first encounters....  My character flaw has a fear of ghosts.  Kevin wanted us each to have a flaw to make our characters more interesting and have fun to roleplay with.

For our table, we bought a shower curtain as it is cheaper than a large vinyl mat, cut it to size and we're using overhead markers to write on it.  He made a dungeon map to go under it and drew on all the features and added tokens as encounters.

The DM notes and encounter tokens!

New miniatures for our characters from Reaper Mini.

The full table view of the dungeon.

Oops, just remembered, forgot to do school pictures today.  Well, maybe we'll take them on Monday.  We were still discussing what to do with them.  Last year it was Minecraft themed, where I used a green screen to superimpose him into a Minecraft scene he composed.  I think he wants to do that again, but after looking at the portrait of Benjamin Franklin with his favorite things to present himself as a person who believed in the Age of Enlightenment, he might want a tailored portrait.  Maybe styled as a painting.  Only my Wacom isn't compatible with Windows 10, plus I managed to lose my stylus!

Last year's pictures!  2015-2016 School Year - 3rd Grade

Start of Year Welcome

I made a Welcome poster in Glogster, it's set to private, so you'll only see the preview here and the links don't work.  Besides, their embed is kind of a big file.  It's an interactive newsletter welcoming him to the class and getting him familiar with the digital tools we will be using.  There's a wonderful repository of classroom apps (we don't have an iPad or a whiteboard) in the Google Chrome Store.  We'll be using some class management ones for rewards and behaviour incentives.  Because nothing else works for very long!

I spent hours picking apps.  I'd find multiple versions and try them to see what fit our needs.  I've divided my Google home page into 3 app pages, first page is my regular Drive/mail/games/etc.  Second page has the apps that I will be using as a teacher with him.  And the third page are the ones I installed on his.  For this, it requires that the students would have  a Google Chrome account.  Chase has one, but he does not know the password for it, I manage it for him.  But most of these apps are links to sites where the child can sign up from any browser.  Some have parent sign ups as well.  The teacher can send out behavioral reports without needing to exchange numbers and e-mails with all the parents.

Most of these apps are free.  I didn't really check into the pay ones.  Mathboard Addition is a great practice, the full version has full equations.  You set how many questions and the parameters.  They can save the quizzes.  This app requires A Google mail account, so maybe teachers would prefer to set up a 'class account' where they log in and let students take turns using the apps.  Fraboom looks really great, but it doesn't seem to be fully released yet, there were things that said "coming soon".  Also, I hadn't set up an account.

Some of the apps Chase will be using are not on here, I didn't put them all, but I gure we will be cycling through them as we go.  So, I expect this to change a lot.

For Scoot n' Doodle, it utilizes GoogleHangouts and a whiteboard for group drawing.  The Hangouts are private, by invite only, so may be a fun way for classes to interact.  Webcams and mics are not required, there is still a type chat.  But you can also add people via phone calls, so I can call Grandma Ginny and add her to the conversation.  You can even save pictures beforehand to set up the classroom.  I did this last year for Chase's 100th day of school.  He and Grandma Ginny had a lot of fun drawing together.  I thought this would be fun for first day as well as special occasions.