6th Grade completed their Christmas Around The World presentations and has shared them online. Just as movies are awarded Academy Awards, 6th Grade voted and awarded the best of their Christmas Around The World Presentations.
The A Room With a View Project continues with pictures and reflections added for February and March. In addition, 6th Grade spent some time looking at some of the other school’s A Room With a View pages and completing a questionnaire about what they reviewed. Here are the A Room With a View pages they visited:
- Mrs. Schuler’s 2nd Grade Class at Enterprise Elementary in Chapman, Kansas (this one can load slowly and at times hangs certain browsers)
- St. Mary’s-St. Alphonsus Regional Catholic School in Glens Falls, New York
- Ms. Knight’s Livewires Waikato, New Zealand
- Mr. Greenburg’s 3rd Grade Class in Bridgeport, CT
- Abanskya School 3 in Krasnoyarsk Territory, Aban, Russia (Some of the 6th Graders commented on this blog)
- Ms. Kruel’s 4th Grade Class
- Mrs. Jahay’s 4th Grade Class at Anthony Elementary School in Anthony, KS (Pictures are available by clicking on the word September)
6th Grade participated in World Math Day in the Computer Lab on March 4th. World Math Day is an International event with students from around the world competing against one another in mental math games to try to set a world record for the most correct math answers in a 2 day period – 2 days because the event ran during the time that it was March 4, 2009 anywhere in the world. 6th Grade answered 3,501 questions correctly during World Math Day and each 6th Grader received a participation certificate from this event. Here are just a few statistics from World Math Day:
- 204 Countries represented
- 12,647 Cities/Towns participating
- 38,058 Schools participating
- 1,952,879 Students participating
- 452,682,682 Questions correctly answered
6th Grade is currently finishing up a 12-class Keyboarding Boot Camp. The goal of these classes is to improve keyboarding technique which will in turn improve keyboarding speed. Grading for these classes is based on correct technique and not on speed. I would encourage you to encourage your child to practice keyboarding at home even after these series of lessons are complete. As with anything, the more you practice, the better you get. Here are some keyboarding lesson sites they could use at home if you do not have specific keyboarding software on your computer:
- TypingWeb.com – Lessons, Graphs to track progress, typing games. This site requires registration and can be ad free for a $5 one-time donation. You can customize the look of your background and some other features.
- GoodTyping.com – 27 lessons. This site requires registration.
- FreeTypingGame.net – This site has lessons, games & speed tests. We often use this site in class to test speed.
- PowerTyping – Simple typing lessons where you can type to music to encourage rhythmic typing. Records your WPM on each lesson and assigns a grade.
- Sense-Lang – A simple site with lessons starting with the home row. This site also allows you to paste text from anywhere and practice typing using that text. This is a nice feature since it practices real typing rather than just random words or letter combinations.
- NimbleFingers – This site has online typing tests and a typing program you can download called Word Wacker. This is a free to try program.
- E-Learning For Kids – May be a little young for most middle schoolers but it is a fun animated course.
- Dance Mat Typing – Fun Characters and songs to introduce Touch Typing for children 7-11 years old from the BBC. This might be a little young for most middle schoolers but it has fun characters. No speed feedback until all lessons are completed.