3-5 Math and Science Category Definition

Eligible entrants: Third through fifth-grade students, with teacher direction as appropriate (see below), enrolled in San Diego County schools. Topics for videos may be based on Math or Science California State Standards. Link all entries to a specific California State Content Standard. The standard does not necessarily have to selected from the grade level that you teach. Eventually, iVIE videos will be searchable by grade and standards, serving as a video library to aid in instruction.

Questions about the differences between student created video and teacher created video or how much to expect from students during the video creation process? Click here for more information.

Examples of 3-5 Math and Science Videos
  • a video used to demonstrate a standard that includes concepts or principles that are difficult to understand
    • "Going in Circles," a fifth grade video about radius and diameter.
    • The Rock Cycle, a fifth grade animation video, showing a group of various types of rocks celebrating a birthday. At the party, they compare notes about the composition and origin of each rock.
    • Weather: A Closer Look , first grade students explain the elements of weather.
Tips for Teaching Video Production
  • A Step-by-step video "Good Readers: Behind the Scenes" developed by first grade teacher, April Payne and Linda Foote, Instructional Technology Specialist from Poway Unified School District. Watch and see how each first grader is assigned an important role in the production of the classroom video.
  • Identify an area of need according to recent test scores. Start with the California State Standard that addresses the area of need. Build your video on the standard, using the visual medium to simplify and teach the difficult concepts. Don't try to cover too much in one video. It's much more effective to focus on one concept and demonstrate it as clearly as possible.
  • Involve students in the decision making process as much as possible.

3-5 Math and Science Entry Examples


Click image to see video

"Incredible Integers" 2006 iVIE Award Nominee
Central Elementary School - Escondido Union Elementary School District - Teacher: Mitchell de Neve

Purpose: To Inform
Audience: Students
Educational Objective: To inform other students about positive and negative integers and absolute value.

California State Content Standards for grade five:

Math Content Standards

Number Sense
1.0 Students compute with very large and very small numbers, positive integers, decimals, and fractions and understand the relationship between decimals, fractions, and percents. They understand the relative magnitudes of numbers:
1.5 Identify and represent on a number line decimals, fractions, mixed numbers,and positive and negative integers.

Language Arts Standards

Organization and Delivery of Oral Communication
1.5 Clarify and support spoken ideas with evidence and examples.

2.0 Speaking Applications
2.2 Deliver informative presentations about an important idea, issue, or event by the following means:

a. Frame questions to direct the investigation.
b. Establish a controlling idea or topic.
c. Develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and explanations.


Click image to see video

 Diary of A Crayfish 2006 iVIE Nominee
Hardy Elementary School - San Diego Unified School District - Teacher: Christine Bailey

Purpose: To Inform
Audience: Students
Educational Objective: Students will write, design and produce a movie that conveys their knowledge of the structures,adaptations and habitat of the crayfish. Students will design a presentation based on the format of books and science informational videos they have read and viewed, that will help other students understand the concepts presented in the unit. All students will participate in a manner that is best suited to their abilities, writing, set design, camera, acting, sound, editing, directing.

California State Content Standards for grade three:

Science Content Standards

Life Science

3. Adaptations in physical structure or behavior may improve an organism's chance for survival. As a basis for understanding this concept:

a. Students know plants and animals have structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction.
b. Students know examples of diverse life forms in different environments, such as oceans, deserts, tundra, forests, grasslands, and wetlands.
c. Students know living things cause changes in the environment in which they live: some of these changes are detrimental to the organism or other organisms, and some are beneficial.
d. Students know when the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce; others die or move to new locations.
e. Students know that some kinds of organisms that once lived on Earth have completely disappeared and that some of those resembled others that are alive today.

Language Arts Content Standards

Organization and Delivery of Oral Communication

1.5 Organize ideas chronologically or around major points of information.
1.6 Provide a beginning, a middle, and an end, including concrete details that develop a central idea.
1.8 Clarify and enhance oral presentations through the use of appropriate props (e.g., objects, pictures, charts).

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