Many of our newcomers are now experiencing snow and winter cold for the first time in their lives.  Along with it, they’re learning the rituals of a Midwestern winter —  how to bundle up, how to go sledding, and how to make a snowman.  Their new fascination with snowmen prompted a language lesson around procedural writing using basic vocabulary and patterned sentences.  For this project students used the MOMA Art Lab app to create 2D snowmen then Adobe Voice to write and read the procedure for making one.

We started by reading All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle — a picture book with simple text that beautifully illustrates the making of a giant snowman.  The book also happens to be an excellent tool for introducing winter clothing vocabulary.  After discussing new words and retelling the sequence for making a snowman, we did a shared procedural writing using the book for visual support.  Students then created snowmen on their iPads using the MOMA Art Lab app.

Illustrating with MOMA Art Lab is simple.  Students choose either shapes or lines and can easily re-size, erase or change colors and backgrounds (the color palette is enormous.)  Illustrations created in the app can be saved in “My Gallery” then easily exported to the camera roll to use in other apps — which we did.

Students’ digital snowmen later became the cover illustrations for their procedural writing project published in Adobe Voice.  But since they created several steps and pages, they also needed several illustrations.  We found additional images on the web and in Adobe’s extensive icon catalog.  Once the videos were complete, they uploaded them to their Seesaw digital portfolios.  Check out a sample of student work here.

Finally, we shared videos and illustrations with the school community by creating posters for the hall with QR codes linking to students’ videos.