All About Me

This year I changed it up a bit for my classes. Each class completed something sharing something about themselves with me. The following are examples of each grade. Each class added a digital picture of themselves. PowerPoint was my media for all grades unless noted.

• First grade typed a sentence about themselves.





• Second grade typed in answers about themselves using Kidspiration. They also added three pictures of interest.



• Third grade did an Acrostic Poem using their name. The final project was typing it in using WordArt. It was printed on fancy paper.




• Fourth Grade did a Venn Diagram after interviewing thier partner. They changed the font (size and color), background, and added clipart.
  
  
  

• Fifth Grade did an All About Me Poster. They changed the font (size and color), background, and added clipart.

New School Year and New Beginnings!

If you have been following my blog...don't panic if it doesn't look the same, you found it correctly. I started to play with the new templates and thought it would be ok to try on a new look. Unfortunately the new look had to stay, since I didn't see my old look available. That is ok, it is a new school year which means new beginnings.

I am very excited about some of the new computer lessons I will be doing this school year. One of my favorite websites is http://jenuinetech.com/. Jennifer Wagner, is the creator of many fun and exciting online project for the K-6 classroom. Many of the projects are very similiar to lessons that we do right now; this could refresh or bring new ideas without reinventing the wheel! Suggestive lessons are even included to go with the projects. My students are going to do the Apple project this year. I am sure their will be others, you will have to stay tuned to see what we do with the Apple project!

End of Year Bulletin Board

I have asked my 5th Grade students to use the Drawing Program to create a self portrait and print to the color printer. The students really need to be encouraged to use the WHOLE screen, otherwise they draw themselve to small for a big bulletin board. Next, they open up word and add a talk bubble and type what they liked about computer class or 5th Grade. They can even talk about what they are looking forward to when they begin middle school. This bulletin board is visible during the summer. It's a great board to have up throughout the summer and visiting families can see what the students like about the school and the things that they learn!

This picture is just a small portion of the whole board! It looks great and I have a lot of compliments on it so far.

Donuts!

Our second graders are going to the neighborhood donut shop to learn about businesses in our community. We used Google documents to take a poll of the class’s favorite donut. I limited the number of choices to four: Glazed, Chocolate, Sprinkles, and Jelly filled. The students took the information and typed the Data into an Excel Spreadsheet to create a Doughnut Graph. I used the website http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/30209-how-its-made-process-of-making-donuts-video.htm to show the process of making donuts. This page showed a link for the Twinkies which was actually the most popular requested website in my computer lab. This was a 40 minute lesson and could have easily been two lessons.

EXCEL and Google Documents

I created a Google document inquiring about their favorite toppings on pizza. I emailed it throughout the school asking teachers to participate and encouraged it be sent out to friends and family. Each time a class came into the computer lab the students participated in the poll.

For the same, grade we worked on graphs for the color of our eyes. Each separate class answered an online poll about the color of their eyes. I have decided to move the eye graph to October. It seems appropriate for the month!

Learn Something New #2

I learned how to use Google Documents! I am very excited about this! Our fourth grade students are learning how to create graphs in Excel. I have created the following online survey using Google Documents. Please take the time to select your favorite pizza toppings.

Voting will end the evening of April 11.

Beginning April 12 the fourth graders will be making pie graphs with the information collected from the online survey.

http://tinyurl.com/yc4hjsm

Please feel free to pass it on to your friends and family.

My next goal is to learn how to do Podcasts!

Learn Something New

Today’s blog entry is to encourage all of us to learn something new.

A friend shared with me a well known company’s philosophy of being known to be good at least at one thing. It is hard to be half as good at many different things. As you master the one thing begin learning something new.

I like this idea so my goal for 2010 has been learn something new and have chosen to learn:
1. to create clay animation and save it using Windows Movie Maker
2. to use Google Documents
3. to learn how to create a podcast


How do you learn something new? Probably the same way most of us learned how to play a game or learned how to use the computers. Try it out and use the Help from the toolbar!

I have learned how to use clay animation and I feel very comfortable teaching this in my classroom!

Materials that you will need:
Goose neck lamp
Digital camera
Computer with Microsoft PowerPoint and/or a Movie Maker
Non-drying clay
CD-R to save the projects

Renewable items that are needed will depend on how often the class is offered, and that would be CD-R, 40W bulbs and non-drying clay.

Timeline of Events
Each meeting is twice a week for 3-4 Weeks.

Week 1 Introduction Introduce claymation and what it involves

Week 2 Create Draw or Print background for project and create clay figures. We used Kidpix for the background

Week 3 Picture Taking Take the necessary pictures for the project. Small movements and more pictures make a great project. Basically repeat these steps. Move the object. Take a picture

Weeks 4-6 Put Project together Using PowerPoint or Windows Movie
Put Project together Or Show and Tell projects