Winter Session Week 4

B1-2:
I am so proud of the emerging keyboarding skills these little guys are showing! Youngers are doing very well with "home row fingers" and the olders are starting to progress at their own pace through the levels of Dance Mat. This week we participated in another project for the Winter Wonderland Wiki called Mitten Math. We watched a story video of Jan Brett reading her book, The Mitten.
We reviewed the sequence of events in the story with a type of Thinking Map called a Flow Map and students completed a math PowerPoint based on the story. Any extra time at the end of class was spent with our favorite snowflake creator, Make a Flake.

3-4 Technology:

We are starting to get some members in the "Underwear Club." When students pass level 10 of Type to Learn, I restart them at level 1 but give them our unique keyboard covers-boxers (unused, of course!).

After keyboarding, we reviewed what makes a quality blog comment with this wonderful video by Mrs. Yollis and her star bloggers. 

We spent some time adding our own quality comments to our friends' blogs and then learned how to use Image Chef to make a fun blog post about Winter. Here is an example.

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

Winter Session Week 3

B1-2 Technology:
Fort Craig B1-2 students are part of the nationwide Winter Wonderland Wiki where we can collaborate on all sorts of winter projects. You can see our wiki page here. This week we listened to the Tumblebook Martin MacGregor's Snowman and then learned how to comment on a voki to talk about what we like to do in Winter. Click the little comment bubble to see some student comment vokis.


3-4 Technology:
First, Type to Learn! We are moving through those levels! After our keyboarding practice, we watched a short Youtube video called "A Chance of Flurries."

Students used a type of thinking map called a Bubble Map to describe snow-they also learned how to use the thesaurus tool on Microsoft Word to get better adjectives. After they completed the bubbles, they used to wonderful site Make a Flake to make a snowflake which could be inserted behind their bubble. The results looked something like this:

Winter Session Week 2

This was a short week due to 3 snow days!

B1-2 Technology:
After our Dance Mat keyboarding practice, we watched a short youtube animation called Snowday.
Using a type of thinking map called a Tree Map, we discussed our snowdays using our 5 senses-what did our snow day look like, feel like, taste like, smell like, and sound like? Students wrote their thoughts on a Word document which they formatted and added clip art.

3-4 Technology:
After Type to Learn, we watched a Brainpop video about the history of computers. We discussed how computers have changed over time and then played several different invention games on ikeepbookmarks such as Goldburger to go , Toy invention
, and invention time machine.

Computer Challenge #1

What did you do on your snowdays? Watch the video, and when it is over click to create your own. Click Share the Fun, and then email it to me at lcvines@ci.maryville.tn.us

If you do not have an email address you can use your pretend one- avatarname@ftcraig.com
I can't wait to get some mail!

Winter Session Week 1

B1-2 Technology:
We are picking up where we left on break, talking about our city. After our keyboarding practice, we listened to the tumblebook The Firestation, by Robert Munsch and brainstormed some other jobs that people have in our city. Using Paint, the students make snowmen doing different jobs-I will put them together into a big Cyber Snow City!

3-4 Technology:
Class started this week with a keyboarding challenge-students stayed in the hallway and tried to fill out a blank keyboard with the correct letter positions. After correcting them in the lab, students went to Type to Learn for some keyboarding practice. To welcome the new year, we wrote on our kidblogs about our predictions, hopes, and resolutions for the new year. The fun came when students learned about HTML code and used MagicWidgets to embed a calendar and some glitter text. Check out their blogs and leave some comments!