Computer Lab News 2nd Grade: Weeks 30 – End of Year

For Earth Day, 2nd Grade discussed why they love the earth and things that we can do to help the earth. Each student then created original artwork using KidPix and these were added to the PlanetFesto ribbon along with their ideas of what they could do to help the earth. After this was completed, 2nd Grade used the PBS site, Eeko World which is designed to help children between the ages of 6 and 9 learn about the important role they can play in taking care of the earth.

The students continued to work on their typing skills using the Dance Mat Typing site. They will continue to use this site in 3rd Grade. 2nd Grade also practiced their Money Skills on various web sites, created a Mother’s Day Wordle which I hope made it home, practiced writing paragraphs in Word and played a variety of educational games to end the year including trying out Jumpstart 3rd Grade!

Next year, these students will participate in the Monster Project as well as continuing to learn about Internet Safety, Microsoft Office Products and Keyboarding.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 3rd Grade

3rd Grade continued to work on the Monster Project. They completed drawing and describing their monsters and these were posted on the Monster Project wiki. Our partner class from Lincoln Elementary Minot Public Schools in Minot, ND took St. Martin’s 3rd graders’ descriptions and tried to recreate our monsters which they then posted on our page on the wiki. 3rd Grade took their descriptions and tried to recreate their monsters and our redrawn monsters were added to their page on the Monster Project wiki. Check out the results and see who came the closest to the original monsters:

When we return from Easter break, 3rd Grade is going to continue with this project by reflecting on the results of the project. The reflections will be posted online when they are complete.

3rd Grade also practiced for and were encouraged to participate from home in World Math Day. This is an annual 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. Three of the students actually did and in fact the student with the most correct math answers during World Math Day was a 3rd Grader. The three students contributed 1441 correct math answers to the world record. 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

For St. Patrick’s Day, 3rd Grade wrote and illustrated a short story about what would happen if they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. These were written and illustrated using WordPad and will be printed and sent home after Easter break.

As students completed work during February and March, they spent time using the educational software program, Jumpstart 3rd Grade.

Make sure you check out the Penguin Glyphs 3rd Grade created for the Winter Wonderland project. These are now available online.