Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Non Fiction Text Features Freebie and Tech Questions

I feel like we have been working on our research report projects forever now and that is probably because we have! Snow days and mini lessons have stretched this unit out for over a month now! And we are not even close to being done!

When we do our research report projects I use this as a time to really focus on non fiction text features. We talk about them every time we read a Scholastic newspaper ,but that is only a couple of times a month and our reading series does not have much non fiction. We started out by choosing a Science Vocabulary reader about an animal for their topic.

 This is one of the peanuts choosing her book.

I usually give them 2 days of our scheduled writing time to just read their books and share fun facts with each other. This time it was more like 4 because I didn't think that with the snow day interruptions they were really being given enough time. Then we started working on a non fiction text features search that I created.

We did a section at a time so we could really focus on each one. I had them search on their own for each topic. Then they partner shared and finally shared out with the whole class.

I promised to have this for you on Sunday and I could not load it because I have compatibility issues between my home and school computer. Gotta love not having the same version of Windows...GR! But I did upload it to Teachers Pay Teachers and it is available there. You can get a copy of it HERE!!!!! 

These are a few pictures I snapped today of the kiddo's working on the very end of it.





Ok, so there is the freebie part. Now the questions part. All of my thumbnails on TPT are SUPER blurry. Does anyone know how I can save a copy of my document that is small enough to put as a thumbnail on TPT. So that it actually  can be recognizable as something other than a blob?

My second question is how do I make sure that no one can edit my work? I created a Creative Commons license for this one but that doesn't seem like it is enough. Specifically, I don't want someone to take something that someone else made ( a border or font) and change it and then I get in trouble for it!

I have so many ideas of things that I want to make but using the computer sometimes proves to be a downfall for me. Just when I think I have really figured something out technology knocks me down a few pegs...Last night I was having a heck of a time formatting a border. I wound up sobbing to my husband about how stupid I felt...and I quote " Other people can make their own fonts and clip art and I can't even add a border!". * Sob, Sob, SOb* I felt super pathetic. To be honest I still feel that way a little bit today but I'm coping much better! LOL!

So any advice on my above questions would be much appreciated. Can't wait until Friday's linky. I have some SUPER fun pics to share this week!

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UPDATE! ONE MORE THING!

There are two hundred follower giveaways I wanted to share with you! One is from WHERE THE WILD THINGS LEARN


AND! The other is from CLOSING THE GAP IN A FASHIONABLE OUTFIT



Ok, now for real. I am done with this post. :)

8 comments:

  1. I am not sure about your first question, but what I do is after creating it in MS Word or Power Point, I save it as a PDF so that everything is locked into the document. I am sure that there is probably another way, but that is what works for me:) Hope that helps!
    Primary Classrooms are Oceans of Fun

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    1. That does help because I actually know how to do that! LOL! Thanks!!

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  2. Agree with saving it as a PDF. I save EVERYTHING as a PDF with my copyright information on it somewhere!

    As far as the thumbnails... TPT has an option when you upload to automatically generate thumbnails. Instead of choosing your own and uploading, you can just skip that and click "next" or "submit" and it will show you your document and let you choose your thumbnails from there.

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    1. Thanks! I tried choosing my thumbnails from there and nothing came up...maybe because they were freebies?

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  3. It looks like Sam and Beach Teacher save things the same way I do! Sometimes I create a graphic with my scrapbooking software and merge it with my PDF on mergepdf.com and then upload the merged file allowing me to choose the picture as my primary thumbnail. I always save everything as a PDF and Word document, so I can go back and fix something if necessary...I learned that the hard way!
    Jenny
    Owl Things First

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    1. Thanks for the tips! Good idea to save as both! This stuff takes long enough to make the first time!
      Jean

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  4. Thank you so much for the great freebie! I do the same thing as the others with my documents and save them all as PDF. Then I choose the slides that I want to be pictured and save those as JPEGs. The photos are then saved as their own file and I am able to just pick them off one, two, three and four. I am following you on TpT now! Thank you so much for sharing!
    Heidi

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    1. Thanks for the tips Heidi and for following. :)
      Jean

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Thanks for leaving a comment. You have o"fish" ally made my day. :)