Christmas Web Sites

If you are looking for websites for Christmas fun, check out http://technologyrocksseriously.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-sits-galore.html and
http://www.santalady.com/xmasgame/xmassong.html.


Btw, Sumdog.com allows you to set up math fact challenges and competitions for your students where they can compete against another class in your building or against classmates.  Mine love it.  I plan to set up competitions/challenges for them to participate in over the break.

Math Web Site

We tried sumdog.com today.  A teacher account is free.  The kids loved playing the multiplication games on there as they could play their classmates.  I'm still learning about the website but what I've seen so far is worth the time to check it out.

Gingerbread Glyphs and More

Gingerbread glyphs are a great way to brighten the hallways and combine reading and math.  The glyph I like to use is from Mailbox.  I found this link and used it this year.  http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/1415.html
I asked the students to highlight their responses on the form.  I let them choose three from the "things I like to do" list.  The ages didn't fit my classroom so I changed them to fit.

After constructing the gingerbread man, each student was assigned one of the questions to collect data.  We discussed tally marks and how to bundle them and why.  We talked about how many tally marks should end up in the data collection.

We used the collected data to create a graph using the data.  We used http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx.  Students downloaded their graph as a jpg file.
Next we opened Publisher and clicked on a brochure template.  We deleted a lot of the information on the brochure and created our own text boxes.  Adding a clip art picture of a gingerbread man added a little extra fun to our project.  Each student inserted the graph they made and created a text box under it to analyze the data in their graph.  Students inserted a graph from a classmate from each one of the questions.  They created a text box to write about what they liked about the project and what they learned.  We had one side of the brochure left so students wrote a story about their gingerbread man.

Editing Stories Using Review/Comment on Word

In the past I had the students print their articles/stories and then I would edit with them using the paper copy.  It was a struggle to get them to make the changes on the computer.  I don't know why.  Some would do it.  Others would fix one thing and tell me they were done.  We wasted a lot of paper, ink and time.

Finally decided to try the review section of word and add comments to the students' documents.  The biggest problem was students deleting the comments.  I'm looking for suggestions on how to stop them from doing that.  Otherwise, I think this is the way to go from now one when editing the stories.

Water Cycle Story

We are writing stories about the water cycle.  Students are using a drop of water as their character.  Their character has to have a name and feelings.  We've worked on using similes and sound words in our stories.  This story will allow us to pull those in along with demonstrating our knowledge of the water cycle.  We are also working on transitioning from one part of the story to the next without using transition words of next and then.  After the stories are done the students will get to illustrate the story using Paint.  They will create a background that will be used for every page of the story and the background has to match the setting of the story.  The stories and illustrations will be used to create a PowerPoint presentation.  Then the slides will be turned into jpg files and used to create a PhotoStory3 presentation.  This gives us the opportunity to use the PowerPoint program and PhotoStory3.

Student examples:  http://mrscooksfantasticfourthgrade.blogspot.com/2012/01/some-more-water-cycle-stories-1-2-3.html

http://mrscooksfantasticfourthgrade.blogspot.com/2011/12/water-cycle-movies.html