Sunday, August 16, 2009

Summer Session Week 4

Kindergarten Spanish:
We added something new to our class starters this week-a game called Me llamo Fred. This game, which is great practice with Como te llamas (What's your name) and Me llamo (my name is), has been a favorite in the past. Student 1 sits backwards in the front of the room with eyes closed, while Student 2 sneeks up behind. Student 1 asks, "Como te llamas?" and Student 2 answers in Spanish with a silly name and a disguised voice before returning to his seat. Student 1 then guesses donde esta (where is) Fred. I'll try to get some video next week. We also learned the days of the week, buenos dias (good morning) and buenas noches (good night) and played a fun game waking people up. Our amigos discussion expanded to community helpers this week with a story called Tito, the Firefighter by Tim Hoppey.

B1-2 Tech:
The students are getting much better with keyseeker! This time, instead of drawing on their hands, I put purple and green smiley faces on the monitor as a reminder. Remember, this can be practiced at home by going to the ikeepbookmarks link. Since B1-2 is learning about ants, we discussed the different parts of an ant and make ant pictures using our Paint program. Their amazing results are published above as a slideshare presentation.


3-4 Tech:
After Type to Learn, we had fun with formatting! Students used Microsoft Word to type their name, move it left-center-right, change font size, color, style and add clipart that represents their own interests. When the final product was saved in our individual tech folders, the students practiced single and double mouse clicks with some mouse fun games.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Summer Session Week 3

Kindergarten Spanish:

Check out Mrs. Stedina's class doing our "buenos dias" song--it's how we start each class.


We also read The Little Half Chick by Lucia M. Gonzalez, a story about a spoiled chick who did not treat his amigos very well, and talked about our "no put-down" rules. We agreed that no one likes put-downs--No Me Gusta!--and talked about things we do like--Me Gusta! After coloring a picture of some things that make us say "Me gusta (I like it)", we talked about how amigos work together and cooperate, especially on a team. We watch Dora the Explorer and her amigos play "futbol" and then we got a chance to work together to try to score some goals with the soccer ball in the classroom. Gol!!


1-2 Technology:

This week the 1-2 classes started Keyseeker, a program which helps young children learn to use two hands while keyboarding. A purple letter on the monitor gets typed with the purple hand and a green letter uses the green hand; thus, the hand smiley faces! We'll be using this program for a few weeks at the beginning of each class. The students also learned how to find their folders on the computer. Lots of "double click" practice (and some frustration!) as we went to My Computer-R drive-Kidsave-teacher name-student name. It will get easier! After that we linked back to the classroom unit study on insects by watching Ace Lacewing: Bug Detective on tumblebooks, a great site.

3-4 Technology:

After our Type to Learn keyboarding practice, the students used Paint to make puzzles as a gift for their younger grade "dynabuddies." They made a picture and then used the straight line tool to divide it into pieces. I'll print out the pictures and laminate them so that they can be cut on the lines and put into a baggie as puzzles for our first grade friends. Here's an example of one of the pictures:

Good mouse control practice as well as lots of fun!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Summer Session Week 2

Kindergarten Spanish:
This week we continued our discussion of amigos with my big bag of puppets! Everyone got an amigo and we learned to ask Como te llamas(What's your name) and Me llamo___(My name is__). We practiced these phrases with name train. As we asked each student "passenger" Como te llamas?, they answered Me llamo___. The class then gave that passenger three cheers as they got on the "train". We soon had the entire class in a long train that chugged around the classroom and back to the alfombra. What fun! After some coloring and more puppet play, it was time to sing our "Adios Amigos" song.

1-2 Technology:
After discussing how our computers are like a house that is sometimes locked, we learned how to login using our "key", our passwords. We definately used our lifeskill of patience as we followed directions and waited for our computers to start up! We reviewed some parts of the computer and then learned how to use the shape tools in Paint to make a monitor, tower, keyboard, and mouse. Some students even made icons and keys. We went to our carpeted "clubhouse" to color a computer parts coloring book while students went in small groups to my hands-on corner to explore the opened tower and other computer parts. I think the hard drive and the CPU were the favorites.


3-4 Technology:
Keyboarding practice first-we always start with 10 min. of Type to Learn. We learned about favorites and bookmarks on the internet and then went to my ikeepbookmarks.com site to check out "The Inside Story" and to practice clicking vs. double clicking with "Tidy the Classroom."


After the classroom was tidied, with everything in its place, we discussed how we have a specific place for saving our documents. Students found their folders by going to R drive, kidsave, teacher name, student name. We used kidspiration "Initial Me" to practice dragging pictures that start with the initials of our first and last name and saved the file in our folders.