TRC Project

Sometimes I get ideas in my head that I should be shot for having...I thought it would be great fun to make a fact/opinion game with the students.  Fact/opinion is one area that the students struggle with on the state test so why not use some of the technology available and do something fun while reinforcing the concept of fact/opinion?  One of my teaching partners is doing this with me...so her class is involved, too.  We used a template of a gameboard found on the internet using PowerPoint.  The students loved rearranging the boxes, changing the color (shades of gray, no color printer) and adding pictures of animals to their boards.  Each child chose a animal as a theme for the board and for their fact/opinion statement game cards.  We went to copyright friendly web sites for pictures and I created a search engine using Google for them.  The search engine only searched specific sites I selected.  I let each of my students create a game, my teaching partner buddied her kids up.  It was a LOT of work on the students' part and mine.  The games are done, now we need some time to play them.  Was it worth all of the time?  Well, I'll wait to comment until after we play the games and after the state test.  The kids are proud of the games so I'm leaning towards it was worth the time.

Splat Multiplication

My students love to use Splat 100s board for marking multiples. 

My teaching partner used Splat to play a multiplication game.  Students were partnered up.  Each pair needs one computer with Splat.  Each child chooses a color to represent him/her on the board.  Each pair needs a pair of 10 sided dice.  Students roll the dice and multiply the two numbers.  The product is marked on the board in the appropriate color.  Students have to decide if whoever marks a color first gets to keep the color if it can be "bumped" into another color if another child rolls that product.  The first child who gets 3 in a row wins.  (or 5 in a row)   See what discoveries can be made about numbers after children have played the game.  (Thanks Amy for the great idea!)

Read Write Think

We've used ReadWriteThink to practice vocabulary words.  We used a one box cartoon to illustrate a word, the speaking bubble should have context clues or another way to define the word.  The caption contained the word with a dictionary type definition.  We also used ReadWriteThink's venn diagrams to compare the multiples of 2s, 3s, and 5s. 

Frustrated

I'm frustrated with myself as I intended to use this blog as a journal of our adventures with technology in the classroom.  I've always used technology, but I've never had so much available to me in my room before this year.  I've fallen behind on documenting what we are doing and any problems.  I'm going to try to do better.

Publisher

I decided to try Publisher with the students and tried to do too much.  They became very frustrated, I became frustrated so we used another program for whatever we were doing.  I found out that experience soured them on Publisher.  I left Publisher alone for a week or so.  Then I made a main idea detail chart from one of the stories in our reading series.  I used the information from the teacher's manual to create boxes.  I put the main idea boxes on one side of the Publisher document, the detail boxes were on the other side and out of order.  The students had to grab a detail box and move it flush with the correct main idea box.  They loved manipulating the boxes.  It gave us a chance to talk about what to do if they change the size of the box or delete a box.  By the time we were done they were no longer were afraid of Publisher.  We didn't do much, but they were successful and that changed their minds about the software.  Now we have used Publisher a few more times and each time I add a few more new things.  I love using this program and they are starting to love it, too.

Wordle

(The beginning of this post is at the end of the post below...hope you figure it out!)

Open the wordle in its own window.  Expand the screen.  Press control and Print screen button on your keyboard.  (For you print screen newbies, when you press this NOTHING HAPPENS!  Don't panic.)  Open PowerPoint.  On a blank screen, right click and click paste.  Your wordle should show up.  Adjust the size and go to picture editing.  I can't give you specific details because I'm on an old computer at the moment and don't have access to the newest version of PowerPoint.  You need to find the picture tool bar.  Find the crop tool.  This crops different than any photo software I've ever used, but it works.  Grab the black lines around the picture.  Move them to where you want to "cut" the picture.  Cool stuff!  Then stretch the wordle to fit the frame.  Print if you like.  (We change the background to white to save on ink.)

Time to Reflect

The intentions behind this blog was to document the year with all of the new technology in my classroom.  I've been so busy that I've failed so far.  This post will be an attempt to start to record what has been accomplished so far.

First, we established expectations when using the computers and returning the computers to the cart.  These are posted on the cart.  The students have done a fabulous job of following expectations.

Our first "project" was a wordle.  Students typed their name in five times (the more times the word appears, the larger it is in the wordle) or so and then typed words that described them.  The word list was created the night before as a homework assignment.  The words were typed into a word document.  Using Word helped with spelling and spacing of words.  Once the words were typed, students copied and pasted the words into the wordle web sight.  The reaction of the students was GREAT when they saw their wordles.