Fort Craig Flash Mob

We surprised our students and parents with a Flash Mob on our last Friday Family Gathering before Fall break. So much fun! Great team building activity as well-I think we look pretty good after only two practices. What do you think?
 

Summer Session Week 10

Time for fun!

Our last class of  the summer session was a fun free day. B-1-2 practiced making pictures, spelling pictures, and spending their "money" on kerpoof. 3-4 students loved challenging each other and unknown students around the world in Arcademic Skill Builder games.  See everyone in October!

Summer Session Week 9

B1-2 Technology:
For a change of pace, this week we played Key Bricks as our keyboarding warm-up. We talked more about monarch life cycle and migration, and explored the monarch winter home in Mexico.  We used kerpoof to make a picture of the life cycle of a monarch. It was the first time our youngers used kerpoof, so logging in was an adventure! Remember, you can have kerpoof fun from home-everyone should have brought home sheets with log in instructions.

3-4 Technology:

Students started class by taking a timed typing test and recording their score. We will take the same test several times throughout the year to see how our speed and accuracy improve. Students finished their Cybersmart powerpoints by adding slide transitions, backgrounds, and custom animation. Finally, the last few minutes were spent playing math skill games with people from all around the country, maybe the world, on the Arcademic Skill Builder site.

Summer Session Week 8

B1-2 Technology:

No keyboarding this week. Instead, we gathered in the "clubhouse" to read Gotta Go! Gotta Go!, a great book about the monarch migration to Mexico. Each fall, monarchs from all over the United States and Canada migrate to the same 12 mountain tops in central Mexico where they roost all winter long in the oyamel fir trees. They find this spot all on their own, never having been there before. It is an incredible story, one that you can learn all about by exploring the fantastic site, Journey North. We used Google earth to check out the monarch sanctuary and to "fly" the 1900 miles there from Maryville, Tn and discussed how monarchs are a shared resource between the countries in North America. The students all made symbolic monarchs which will also spend the winter in Mexico. In the spring, we will get back paper monarchs from students all over the United States and Canada. Thanks to Journey North, everything will be entered on a collaborative map so we will be able to track where our butterflies landed in the spring. Very exciting!

3-4 Technology:

Are you Cyber Smart? Fort Craig students are! After some Dance Mat keyboarding, we started working on a Cyber Smart powerpoint. This week, students added slides for each of our SMART rules: Safe, Manners, Attachments, Reliable, Tell. They wrote text and inserted pictures for each slide. We spent the last 10 minutes of class exploring the social networking features of Kerpoof, including the message boards, emailing pictures, and "favoriting" pictures.

Summer Session Week 7

      

B1-2 Technology:
                                   

 While the B1-2 students focus on ants in their classroom, in the tech lab we are all about butterflies, especially monarchs. After our keyboarding, we spent 30 seconds "catching" some butterflies so we could examine them more closely. We noticed that butterflies and ants both have the same body parts since they are both insects. Just like people, though, there are still lots of differences even though the body parts are the same. We looked at some butterfly photos and took a few minutes to make our own unique butterfly. Next, we looked more closely at the life cycle of the monarch butterfly and compared it to an ant's life cycle. It was so exciting to see the caterpillar munch milkweed, go into it's chrysalis, and emerge as an adult butterfly! Students played the life cycle game, colored the life cycle online, and made a butterfly garden. Next week we get ready to migrate!   



 

3-4 Technology:

This week we took a break from Type to Learn to do a little Dance Mat Typing.  We continued our internet safety lessons by discussing a Word document about being Cyber SMART-Safe (Don't give out personal information or meet people offline), Manners (Don't be a cyber bully!), Attachments (Don't open emails or download things from people you don't know to avoid getting a computer virus),  Reliable (People online might not be who they say they are and don't believe everything you read online), and Tell (a trusted adult if something or someone bothers you online.) The real fun came when students learned how to format the background of a document! After experimenting with several backgrounds and then saving the finished product, students used a space background in Kerpoof to make a Cyber Space Rules picture. Here is a an example:  

    

Summer Session Week 6

B1-2 Technology:
Keyboarding practice, then more bugs-this time, computer bugs! And even though the very first computer "bug" was an actual moth (now on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History) found in the electrical circuits of a 1947 Mark II computer, I don't mean real bugs like this:



We talked instead about computer viruses and how to try and prevent them-don't open emails and attachments from people you don't know, don't click on pop up ads, don't download things without your parents permission, and always have antivirus software installed. We watched the Netsmartz clip "Don't Open That File!" and played the computer virus game and the Cyberchase game, Bugs in the System before going to the clubhouse to color our own computer bugs.

3-4 Technology:
More Type to Learn-students are really moving through the lessons. Some even skip the optional games so they can advance more quickly and reach level 10 when they can join the "Underwear Club" and have their keyboard covered with a pair of boxer shorts! After keyboarding, students had fun using my smartphone to decode our "Who Am I?" Qr code people in the hallway.



While waiting for their group's turn with the phone, students made an avatar to save in their folder, and completed the Professor Garfield Online Safety lessons where they learned what things are appropriate to post on the internet  and what things are not. They played Red remover to get rid of the bad things (red) and keep the good ones (green).
                                                                   Here is my avatar:

Computer Challenge #2

Bad Guy Patrol

Click on ages 8-10 and complete all the missions to collect your flags.

Print out your certificate, or have a parent write a note that you completed the activity, and bring it to me to get your name entered in the "I can" can!