After finishing Bud, Not Buddy a few weeks ago, I wanted to complete one more Bud, Not Buddy assignment. The students just finished state testing, so I didn’t want to overwhelm them with another paper or poem analysis. I decided to let them choose a character from Bud, Not Buddy, and create a faux Instagram or Facebook for the character. They REALLY loved this! All of the students really got into it, and were trying to one up each other with silly comments, emoji, and pictures. Most of them wanted to pretend to be Bud Caldwell, and I had a few students decide to mix it up. Their social media account of choice? INSTAGRAM! Out of 80 students, I only had three students turn in Facebook profiles!

The biggest question I got was, “Mrs. Leonardo, how can we add filters to the photos?” Haha PicMonkey to the rescue!

The Directions:

How the Task Was Completed:

• I had plans to create my own Instagram and Facebook templates, but I ran out of time. I bought these templates using my TPT credits. Facebook template and Instagram template
• I made sure the files were .PPT (PowerPoint) files; I’ve found that students think PPT files are the easiest to work with in Google Drive.
• I uploaded the .PPT file to Google Drive, and I opened it in Google Slides.
• The document was then shared via Google Classroom.
• Students used Dell Chromebooks for this assignment; when I check two weeks ago, slides for iPad wasn’t allowing pictures to be inserted into documents. One of my students told me yesterday his iPad finally got an update, and pictures can now be inserted into a Google Slides presentation (on iPad).
• I wanted the assignment to be completed within three class periods (three days), and most students finished within two periods.

Next Time:

• We read Bud, Not Buddy for several reasons: figurative language, author’s tone, survive vs. thrive, perseverance, and analyzing Bud’s rules.
• While we talked about the characters, we didn’t really analyze the characters.
• I would suggest having the students keep notes about each character of the book. When they get to this assignment they can refer to their notes.
• I would also like to add a writing component to this assignment. I’d probably nix three of the photos from  the Instagram assignment, and ask students to explain their character, why the pictures they chose are important, and how their comments relate to the character.