6th Grade completed their 12 class Keyboarding Boot Camp with a class average typing speed of 28.5 WPM and an average speed increase of 21%. All but two of the students increased their typing speed during the 12 class session. Touch typing using correct technique is a skill that will be useful not only during Middle School but will be invaluable in High School and beyond. I would encourage your children to practice their keyboarding skills over the summer. Check the Summer Ideas page for links to keyboarding sites but practice does not have to be actual keyboarding sites. Keyboarding skills can improve while IMing or playing games online or emailing, etc. as long as the correct technique is used each and every time any typing is done. Take some time to watch your child as they type and encourage them to properly position their hands and to use the correct fingers for typing. It’s much easier to learn to do this correctly then to have to unlearn bad habits.

For Earth Day, 6th Grade watched and then discussed the presentation, The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. As a follow-up to this presentation, each student created original artwork and then created a ribbon piece on the PlanetFesto ribbon to celebrate the reasons they love the earth and to commit to doing something to help perserve the earth.

6th Grade also spent some time correcting errors in three poems about Spell Checkers. Often we all rely too much on the spell check feature in Microsoft Word and these poems point out that this tool will not catch every error you make in something you write. Try these yourself? Can you find all the errors?

6th Grade also wrapped up the A Room With a View Project with pictures and reflections added for April and May. Each student took a picture around the campus in May and posted that to the timeline on the project. Have your child show you which picture they took!

6th Grade also completed How To Survive Middle School brochures for 5th Grade using Microsoft Word. These were allowed to be humorous or serious but were supposed to be truthful and not derogatory to the teachers or the 6th Graders. Each student printed two copies of their brochure – one that they kept and one that was given to one of the 5th Graders. The students seemed to enjoy making these however I believe the point of helping the 5th Graders may have gotten lost. I hope that when school starts that this class truly does help the new 6th Grade class to survive and thrive in Middle School.

The final task for 6th Grade was to fill out a survey about the projects and activities they completed this year during computer class. As you can see the brochure project was the most favorite project this year. For your Information, ARWAV is the A Room With a View Project.

Christmas Around the World followed by the 12 class Keyboarding Boot Camp were the least favorites this year, however, more students felt that the Keyboarding Boot Camp was the most useful project or activity they did this year than disliked it.

The Most Useful Project or Activity was the Keyboarding Boot Camp according to the survey, however, many other projects/activities received votes too:

I look forward to next year in the Computer Lab where we will continue to improve our typing speeds, learn more about Microsoft Office and participate in more collaborative projects.