5th Grade Digital Photograhy

January 29 is National Puzzle Day
1. Have students take pictures of a class of an activity around the school.
2. Save pictures to a shared folder
3. Insert into Microsoft Paint.
4. Add lines for Puzzle shapes.
5. Cut out pieces and glue down to construction paper.
6. Frame your puzzle using ribbon, buttons or both. Use your imagination.

National "Insert Word Here" Month

Need a new idea to jazz up your lessons? Research what might be recognized for that month. For example September is National Potato Month and October is National Pizza Month. Students in grades 3-5 can make pie graphs showing favorite pizza topping and student K-1 can draw a picture of a pizza and write a sentence about their picture.

Here is a fun website. www.tagxedo.com After you paste your text into the word boxes you can choose different options that will arrange your work into word clouds in shapes instead of randolmly placed.

I will post some of my student work later in October! Happy Computing!

Upgrade and new learning

I posted before to learn something new every year. This year I am going to have to learn how to navigate around the latest version of Microsoft Suite (for not tech people, that would be Word, Excel, PowerPoint). I am hoping that most of my projects will easily transfer over and be compatiable. Teaching this year will bring forth many challenges since my chants (i.e. In-sert pic-ture, clip art) will no longer work. Hopefully the new changes will be easier for my students. It sounds like an opportunity for some curriculum writing updates.

It would not be me not to post a cool tip....

Did you know in the newer version of Microsoft Word instead of saving as a document it can be saved as a .pdf ! If your parents have access to Adobe Acrobat no longer will the issue of your document not being able to open for the user!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Today’s blog is in celebration of Read Across America.

My first graders listened to Green Eggs and Ham where as my Kindergarten students listened to One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

The first graders completed the sentence I would eat my green and ham.

The Kindergartners are learning how to click and type numbers and adding up to the sum of 5.

President Day and Snow Days

Today I began our new project by taking pictures of my first graders wearing a tricorner hat (like George Washington) or a stove pipe hat (like Abraham Lincoln). The students inserted their picture and completed the sentence "If I were president I would....."

Snowmegeddon has been prominent in the area where I live. After reading the story The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, the first graders drew a picture on what they would do on a snowy day. They also typed a sentence about their picture.

Remember, keyboarding in first grade. The students need to learn proper keyboarding: sitting tall in the chair, legs uncrossed, not sitting on their feet. They often hear me say "Two handed typing, what the right hand can do the left hand can help out" or for my left handed friends, what the left hand can do the right hand can help out! I only encourage them the home row position of there hands. They are still a bit to young to be told to keep their hands in homerow and reach for the other keys.

Snowman Book Reports

The third grade students used the draw tool bar to decorate in the snowman’s face and the hat. The body of the snowman contains the title and author. The bottom of the snowman will contain information about an event that happened in the book. Students changed the font, size and color. Cut it out. Glue and paste to a piece of construction paper! This projects was given two thumbs up!

Picketing Turkeys!

My favorite lessons are when I can relate a book to an activity. This lesson was inspired from my community center after voting! I saw picketing turkeys in the hallway and thought about what a great idea to pair up with the book called A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting. The students used paint to color in the picketing turkey and completed the phrase Eat More….. They printed them and it really makes a great display of colorful projects. This lesson can be adapted in many ways:

1. Put the pictures in Photo Story to read what they wrote.


2. Write a story about the picture they colored.


3. Talk about healthy food choices.


4. Translate Eat More in Spanish (Coma Mas) and pair it with a food in Spanish. Record students reading what they wrote!