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Computer Lab News Kindergarten: Weeks 30 – End of Year

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Let’s start out by sharing some projects that were previously completed. Our first share is the Dinosaur Math & Art project:

Kindergarten & 1st Grade’s pictures from Easter have been put in to a slideshow for your enjoyment:

For Earth Day, Kindergarten was read the Dr. Seuss book, The Lorax and then they drew pictures in KidPix showing what they think the Lorax’s world looked like after the boy was given the seed. You can see the pictures on our Earth Day page on the wiki along with the projects completed by other grades for Earth Day.

Kindergarten was also busy at the end of the year finishing up their Adventures In Keyboarding project which were printed as mini-books. I hope that you had an opportunity to see them and that you realize that your student typed all of the words themselves! They all did a great job.

Kindergarten’s final project for the year were Ladybug Math Books. This project started out with the reading of the Eric Carle book, The Grouchy Ladybug and watching some ladybug videos. Each Kindergartener then drew a picture of a Ladybug and then completed the Ladybug Math Book in PowerPoint which covered the following math concepts:

  • Counting (entry of number into a text box)
  • Pattern Recognition & Completion (dragging graphic which completes pattern into a box)
  • Matching of Number Words to a Number (drawing a line with the drawing tool)
  • Matching of Time to the Hour to a Clock, this includes references to The Grouchy Ladybug (drawing a line with the drawing tool)

Kindergarten was very busy at the end of the year but they still had time to play some educational games including trying out JumpStart 1st Grade!

Computer Lab News 7th Grade: Weeks 30-End of Year

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The end of the year was busy and productive for 7th Grade. I hope that they learned a lot this year in computers and will continue to practice their keyboarding skills over the summer. Take some time to watch your 7th Grader when they are using the computer to see if they’re using the correct technique when they are typing – be it gaming, IMing or whatever. Encourage them to always use correct techniques and this will become second nature to them. As an incentive, if the class is typing at a speed of 40WPM or higher with good technique there will not be a need for specific keyboarding classes next year!

For Earth Day, 7th Grade watched and then discussed the presentation, The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. As a follow-up to this presentation, each 7th Grade 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.

7th Grade also viewed the 8th Grade Think Before You Post presentations and voted for their favorites in 3 different categories. The winning 8th Grade students were presented with awards at their Graduation Breakfast. 7th 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?

The last project completed by 7th Grade was a careers project. This began with the 7th Grade running their own virtual business using Coolmath’s Lemonade Stand Game and tracking their results. We then discussed running a business and their ideas about future careers. They then used the online tool Drive of Your Life to identify career areas that might interest them based on answers to a series of questions. This site is based in Indiana so some of the salary information isn’t correct for California but it does give the students ideas about how salaries of different jobs relate and it’s a fun way to explore careers. Using Drive of Your Life they were required to explore at least 6 possible careers that had to include at least three which required 4 years or more of college plus one that required at least some education or training after high school plus at least one that wasn’t on their recommended list. As they completed this drive they completed some activities using Word to keep track of the careers they were choosing and what their choices meant. After they had completed Drive of Your Life, each student created a single slide in PowerPoint with the career of their choice. They recorded information about this career including: Education Required, Salary Expectations, Working Conditions, What you actually do on the job and Why they chose that career. These were then combined into one presentation:

It may seem rather early to think about careers in 7th Grade since they are only 13 years old but their grades, attitudes, work ethic, etc. in 8th Grade will have a major impact on the choices they will have for high school and that can impact where they will be able to go to college.  Even though most of the 7th Graders will probably end up changing their minds about their careers more than once before they complete college, it’s definitely not too early to start thinking about what they need to do in school to prepare themselves for whatever career they eventually choose.

The last thing that 7th Grade did for the year was to fill out a survey about the projects and activities they completed this year during computer class and the things that they hope to learn next year. As you can see from the results below, Keyboarding Boot Camp was not a popular activity (DoYL is Drive of Your Life), however at least some of the students (who did vote for it as their least favorite) realized that it was one of the most useful activities they did this year and some even requested that they learn to type better next year!

What were the requests for next year? Here’s a sampling of what was requested:

  • I would like to learn to be a faster, more accurate typer.
  • I would like to learn how to type faster.
  • What I would like to learn in computers next year is how to type perfectly with no mistakes.
  • I would like to learn how to make a website.
  • Less typing and more computer safety.
  • Designing video games or programming stuff and how to build a computer.
  • Making videos would be interesting.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 8th Grade

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The first 8th Grade Social Studies podcast was completed. Unfortunately, one group’s recordings got corrupted somehow so this group is not included in the podcast. As I listened to the completed podcast, I discovered a few errors in the information included in the podcast that were not caught before the recording. Can you find them? I will be reviewing these with the class after Easter break. You can subscribe to all St. Martin’s Podcasts from iTunes at http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=309479240.

As teenagers and soon to be high schoolers, 8th Graders tend to have more access to social networking and other sharing sites on the Internet. 8th Grade spent some time creating interactive PowerPoint presentations about thinking before you post online. When these were done, they uploaded them to St. Martin’s Computer Lab SlideBoom account and then embedded them on our wiki where you can see their presentations. 8th Grade will be viewing all of these and voting for their favorites after Easter break.

8th Grade also participated in World Math Day in the Computer Lab on March 3rd. 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. 8th Grade answered 2,983 questions correctly during World Math Day and each 8th 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

Did you know that 3/14 is Pi Day? It is and in celebration, 8th Grade completed an extra credit Pi Day Trivia Hunt.

8th Grade has also begun a new Social Studies related project. They were each assigned a President and read that President’s Inaugural Address. They then posted their analysis of the address. After the Easter break, they will use Wordle to create a pictorial representation of the Inaugural Address and then re-analyze the speech. Both analyses (see the discussions tab) and the pictorial representations will be available on the 8th Grade Social Studies wiki.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 6th Grade

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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:

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.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 4th Grade

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4th Grade completed their Snow Cinquains and altered snowflakes and these are now shared on the Travel Scrapbook on our wiki. I hope you will take a minute to check these out. They did a great job with the snowflakes and their poetry.

4th Grade also completed the February and March Voices of the World activities. February’s activity was to illustrate and say the months of the year and March’s activity was to illustrate the various locations of the schools participating and say the name of the state and/or country. These are now shared on our Voices of the World page on our wiki. If you haven’t, I would encourage you to visit the Voices of the World Wiki and check out all of the voices participating in this project – it really is amazing!

4th Grade is currently in the middle of a 12 Class Keyboarding Boot Camp. This involves taking a timed test at the beginning of class, completing keyboarding lessons in Mavis Beacon and playing some typing games. These classes are meant to teach proper technique and not to concentrate too much on speed. If your child memorizes the keyboard and learns the correct technique for keyboarding, speed will come. I would encourage you to encourage your child to practice keyboarding at home. As with anything, the more you practice, the better you get. Here are some keyboarding lesson sites they could use at home:

  • 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 – A fun animated course.
  • Dance Mat Typing – Fun Characters and songs to introduce Touch Typing for children 7-11 years old from the BBC.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – 2nd Grade

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February once again brought Winter Wonderland activities for 2nd Grade. They created and recorded a Virtual Valentine and completed a Things I Love activity. The Things I Love activity gave 2nd Grade the opportunity to reinforce searching for and adding clipart to PowerPoint presentations and they also learned how to narrate a slide. All of the completed Winter Wonderland activities are shared on their Winter Wonderland page. If you haven’t seen these, you really should take a minute to check them out.

One of the activities that all classes were encouraged to do in March was 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. 2nd Grade was not in the computer lab either day we could have competed at school but they practiced in the lab and were encouraged to try to participate at home. Two of the students actually did and added 383 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

2nd Grade worked on their keyboarding skills by completing Level 1 of Dance Mat Typing. They also wrote and illustrated a short story about what would happen or what they would do if they found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For this story, they used Wordpad and drew the illustration using the built in drawing tools in Wordpad. These have been printed and sent home. I hope you had an opportunity to see them. 2nd Grade also spent time using the educational program, Jumpstart 2nd Grade.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 21-29 – Kindergarten

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Kindergarten has had a busy February and March in the Computer Lab. They continued with their Adventures in Keyboarding focusing on words starting with the letters “H” through “O”.

We have been trying to work on things in the lab that correlate with the Kindergarten curriculum. February started off with lessons about the ocean and all of the Kindergarten students drawing pictures of the ocean in KidPix. These were on display in the lab at Open House and have been sent home with your students. They all did a terrific job drawing their ocean floor and the ocean and adding habitat animals. After our ocean adventures, we moved on to learning more about dinosaurs by putting dinosaurs in order by size and then drawing our very own dinosaur picture using Drawing For Children. This is a free drawing program for children that you could download and use at home if you have a PC at home. After drawing their dinosaur pictures, each student completed a Dinosaur Book in Powerpoint that worked on some math concepts as well as starting to teach them how to add clipart and images to Powerpoint presentations. The finished Dinosaur Books will be printed and sent home after Easter break and will also be shared online.

The dinosaur activities took us in to March where we talked about the life cycle of butterflies and created our own butterfly life cycle picture on a website called Kerpoof. We have special student logins for this at school but your student can play on this at home too. You can join for a fee or just use the tools without joining for free! The butterfly life cycle pictures have been sent home. I hope that you had a chance to look at them.

In the last class before Easter break, each Kindergarten student drew an Easter picture in KidPix. These will be shared online.

In addition to all the rest, Kindergarten also used the educational software program Sammy’s Science House and worked on their literacy skills at Starfall and played and learned about the life in the Great North and the Inuit people at Wumpa’s World.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 17-20

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Wow, it’s February already and here’s what we did in the lab during January!

KINDERGARTEN: Kindergarten worked on learning more letters on the keyboard focusing on the letters “E” through “G” this month. Kindergarten once again concentrated on all things winter and the Winter Wonderland Project. The students watched some of the videos created by other schools involved with this project and they had fun seeing the pictures and singing along to the songs. For their contributions to the project this month, each Kindergarten student created a Penguin Glyph and completed a Penguin Math Book. You can see the finished projects on Kindergarten’s Winter Wonderland page. The book My Brother Loved Snowflakes was read to Kindergarten and they are currently creating their own snowflakes using KidPix in tribute to Wilson Bentley.

1ST GRADE: 1st Grade also spent most of their time this month working on winter things for the Winter Wonderland Project. The students watched some of the videos created by other schools involved with this project and dictated comments to be left for the other schools which were posted on the project wiki. For their contributions to the project this month, each 1st Grade student created a Penguin Glyph and completed a Penguin Math Book. These will be added to 1st Grade’s Winter Wonderland page very soon. 1st Grade also enjoyed the book My Brother Loved Snowflakes and drew their very own snowflakes in KidPix. In addition to the winter projects, 1st Grade also continued to work on their Adventures in Keyboaring completing letters “E” throught “G” this month.

2ND GRADE: The Winter Wonderland Project was also the focus for 2nd Grade this month. They started off the month by reading the Lookybook Penguins Everywhere. Then, they too completed Penguin Glyphs. In addition to just creating the glyph according to the directions, 2nd Grade learned how to rotate items in PowerPoint and to add clipart to their completed glyph. Each 2nd grader was assigned a type of penguin and had to find out how tall the penguin is, how much they weigh and what they eat and add this information to their glyph. You can see the completed glyphs and penguin information on 2nd Grade’s Winter Wonderland page. 2nd Grade is finishing up the Penguin Math Books this coming week and those will be shared once they are complete.

3RD GRADE: 3rd Grade also watched and commented on videos done by other schools in the Winter Wonderland Project and completed Penguin Glyphs. 3rd Grade also reviewed how to rotate items in PowerPoint and how to add clipart to their completed glyph. Each 3rd grader also included information about their assigned type of penguin on their glyph. This will be shared on 3rd Grade’s Winter Wonderland page very soon. 3rd Grade has also joined another collaborative project, The Monster Project. As an introduction to this project, 3rd Grade watched a video about adjectives and listened to the book, Many Luscious Lollipops. After reviewing what an adjective is, 3rd grade then created an Adjective Web about their favorite food.

4TH GRADE: 4th Grade began the new year by checking out who had taken their Christmas Tongue Twister challenges and then they listened to and commented on the December Voices of the World projects from the other schools. St. Martin’s was in charge of the January Voices of the World project and we had fun making our video of the song Make New Friends. You can check it out on our Voices of the World page. We can’t wait to see what the other schools do with this. Since January was a short month due to the winter break some of the schools are still working on this. 4th Grade isn’t involved with the Winter Wonderland Project since this is a K-3 project but they did spend some time working on projects inspired by this project. Wilson Bentley was introduced to 4th Grade through the book Snowflake Bentley. After this was read, 4th Grade used a template in PowerPoint to create a timeline of Bentley’s life and decorated it with appropriate clip art. 4th Grade then used PhotoFiltre to digitally alter Wilson Bentley’s snowflake images in the style of Rick Doble. The cinquain style of poetry was then reviewed and 4th grade created a slide in PowerPoint which contained their snowflake image(s) and a cinquain poem that they wrote about snow or winter or Wilson Bentley. They learned how to record in PowerPoint and they recorded themselves reciting their poem. A show of all of their snowflakes and poems will be coming soon.

5TH GRADE: Ask your 5th Grader about GMT or UTC and they should know what those are and be able to tell you the difference between California time and GMT. This month in computers was all about time for 5th Grade as they began working on the Time Zone Experiences project. 5th Grade started out the month with an introduction to the project and to Greenwich Mean Time. They were also introduced to how to edit a wiki and what a “wiki war” is. After taking a short quiz about time and a survey about when they go to bed and wake up, each 5th Grade student was assigned a Greenwich Mean Time. They have been working on editing our  wiki to add information about what time that is in California time and what St. Martin’s 5th Graders would normally be doing at that time of day. They are also using KidPix to draw a picture about what would normally be happening at that time and are adding that to their page on the wiki too. You can watch our progress on our Time Zone Experiences page. Once they have finished their pages on our wiki, they will be updating the Time Zone Experiences project with their information too.

6TH GRADE: Just before the Christmas break, 6th Grade began working on a research project about Christmas Around The World. Each student was assigned a country and had to make an outline in Microsoft Word about what Christmas is like in that country. They then created a PowerPoint presentation from their outline and used that information to create visual slides about Christmas in their country. Once their slides were complete, they narrated each slide. After their presentation was complete, they uploaded it to St. Martin’s account at Slideboom and then added their Slideboom presentation to our Christmas Around The World page. This project meant learning a lot of new skills and reviewing some previously learned: Outlining in Word, Creating a PowerPoint presentation from a Word outline, Recording narration on a slide, Making a sound play automatically on a slide, Transitioning slides, Uploading to Slideboom, Editing a Wiki. There a still a few students that haven’t quite finished but most of the completed presentations are available on our Christmas Around The World page. In addition to this project, 6th Grade also worked on their January Reflections for the A Room With a View project and reviewed some of the other school’s pictures and comments in this project.

7TH GRADE: 7th Grade spent the first week of the month completing their Human Genetics Final Reports an Cyber Bullying Glogs if those were not done. On Inauguration Day, 7th Grade watched a Dateline NBC video called Hope, Change & Symbolism and discussed how far the country has come. They also discussed what they thought the themes of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech was. The format of a formal letter was reviewed and then each student wrote a letter to the President. These have been mailed for any student that wanted their letter sent to the President. 7th Grade ended the month working on a project inspired by the Winter Wonderland Project. The book Snowflake Bentley was read to introduce 7th Grade to Wilson Bentley and then 7th Grade used Excel to create an illustrated timeline of Wilson Bentley’s life. After the timeline was complete, they then used PhotoFiltre to digitally alter Wilson Bentley’s snowflake images in the style of Rick Doble. Two styles of poetry were reviewed, cinquain and haiku, after which 7th Grade created a slide in PowerPoint which contained their snowflake image(s) and a poem that they wrote about snow or winter or Wilson Bentley. They learned how to record in PowerPoint and they recorded themselves reciting their poem. A show of all of their snowflakes and poems will be coming soon.

8TH GRADE: On Inauguration Day, 8th Grade also watched the Dateline NBC video called Hope, Change & Symbolism and discussed how far the country has come and what they thought the themes of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech was. The format of a formal letter was reviewed and then each student wrote a letter to the President. These have been mailed for any student that wanted their letter sent to the President. The rest of the month has been spent writing scripts for the first Social Studies podcast. The segments of this are currently being recorded and will be shared very soon.

Computer Lab News: Weeks 14-16

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Wow, December was a busy month at St. Martin’s and not just in the Computer Lab!! I hope that all of you have had a wonderful Christmas. First, I’d like to share with you an online holiday card that I created for a collaborative project that Kindergarten through 3rd Grade are currently doing. All of the Kindergarten & 1st Grade students drew nativity pictures in KidPix and I used this to create our Holiday Card. You can see our card and a card created by another school in the project on the Winter Wonderland Holiday Cards page. And now, here’s a recap of what happened in the Computer Lab during December and a whole lot of projects for you to take a look at.

Kindergarten through 3rd Grade focused on the Winter Wonderland project during December. This is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities for December, January & February. Kindergarten-3rd Grade will be doing at least some of these activities during these months and reviewing the activities done by other schools.

KINDERGARTEN: Kindergarten worked on learning more letters on the keyboard focusing on the letters “C” and “D” this month. KidPix was put to good use drawing both Winter Wonderland pictures and Nativity pictures. The Winter Wonderland pictures were made into a video which also includes Kindergarten singing “Jingle Bells”. The Nativity pictures were used in our online Holiday Card and Kindergarten signed some real cards that we sent to a few of the participating schools in the Winter Wonderland project. Kindergarten also took holiday polls as part of the Winter Wonderland project and we graphed the results in Excel. And when we were all done with that, Kindergarten played some fun Christmas games on the Internet. Check out Kindergarten’s Winter Wonderland page to see their video and the results of our polls.

1ST GRADE: 1st Grade worked on keyboarding focusing on the letters “C” and “D”. We will be continuing this each week for most of the rest of the school year and will have a mini-alphabet book when we’re done. 1st Grade took the Holiday Polls for the Winter Wonderland project and created a Winter Wonderland video with pictures they drew in KidPix and a recording of them singing “Jingle Bells”. 1st Grade also drew Nativity pictures for our online Holiday Card and signed some real cards that we sent to a few of the participating schools in the Winter Wonderland project. Check out 1st Grade’s Winter Wonderland page to see their video and the results of our polls. 1st Grade even had some time just before Christmas to play some fun Christmas Games online. I’ve also posted 1st Grade’s Hand Turkeys that they created in November on our Travel Scrapbook so check those out when you get a chance.

2ND GRADE: 2nd Grade spent December focused on Winter Wonderland projects. First, they took the Holiday Polls for the Winter Wonderland project. They did this by filling out a form online on the Winter Wonderland wiki and submitting their answers. If you want to see the results of these polls for all the schools in the project, you can go to Winter Wonderland Holiday Polls and have a look. Then 2nd Grade drew pictures of what Winter Wonderland looks like to them and they sang “Jingle Bells” and were recorded during a computer class. Their pictures and their singing were combined to make a video. 2nd Grade wasn’t done with Winter Wonderland yet though. They also created Gingerbread Houses in Excel by coloring cells based on a template and then adding clipart to decorate their houses. You can see 2nd Grade’s video and their Gingerbread Houses on their Winter Wonderland page. I have also posted 2nd Grade’s Pumpkin Math Books and their November projects on their Online Autumn page – make sure you check these out too!

3RD GRADE: 3rd Grade completed Winter Wonderland activities during December. First, they took the Holiday Polls for the Winter Wonderland project. They did this by filling out a form online on the Winter Wonderland wiki and submitting their answers. If you want to see the results of these polls for all the schools in the project, you can go to Winter Wonderland Holiday Polls and have a look. When the polls were done, 3rd Grade drew pictures of what Winter Wonderland looks like to them and they sang “Jingle Bells” and were recorded during a computer class. Their pictures and their singing were combined to make a video. 3rd Grade also created Gingerbread Houses in Excel by coloring cells based on a template and then adding clipart to decorate their houses. When they completed their Gingerbread Houses, they were able to play some Gingerbread or Christmas Games. You can see 3rd Grade’s Winter Wonderland video and their Gingerbread Houses on their Winter Wonderland page. 3rd Grade’s “What I Am Thankful For” and “Turkey Glyph” projects are also now available on our Travel Scrapbook – check them out!

4TH GRADE: 4th Grade completed the December activity for their online project, Voices of the World.  You can see this on their Voices of the World page and check out all of the other voices on the Voices of the World wiki. Do you know how to say Peace, Love, Hope and Joy in other languages? You can find out at Voices of the World! 4th Grade has also started working on their keyboarding skills using Sponge Bob Typing. 4th Grade’s Christmas project was a fun one. They selected a Christmas Tongue Twister and illustrated it and then added it to our Tongue Twister VoiceThread where they said the Tongue Twister and then challenged others to say it too. Students from a school in New Jersey have taken their challenges and you can hear them on the VoiceThread too! Can you meet the challenge? Set up a VoiceThread account (it’s free) and try it! 4th Grade’s Internet Safety Posters and their Persuasive Turkeys have been added to our Travel Scrapbook. Make sure you take some time to look at these too.

5TH GRADE: 5th Grade spent some time keyboarding in Mavis Beacon this month and they did a fun Christmas Typing activity. They were challenged to type the lyrics to a song using Microsoft as they listened to the song. Try this – it’s harder than you think. Once they were done with the lyrics, they had to add at least one clip art picture to decorate their lyrics. 5th Grade also completed a spreadsheet in Excel in order to figure out how many presents were received in total for the 12 Days of Christmas. Do you know? Ask your 5th Grader! 5th Grade’s Internet Safety Posters and their Persuasive Turkeys have been added to our Travel Scrapbook – check them out. We will be starting an online collaborative project in January and this requires that each 5th Grader return a signed Wiki Warranty. If you have not seen and signed this, please download it from here, discuss it with your 5th Grader and sign and return it to school.

6TH GRADE: 6th Grade completed their reflections for December and posted them to the discussions tab on their A Room With A View page. Head over to the page to check out the photos so far and read the reflections by clicking on the Discussions tab and then on each month. 6th Grade also tried the lyrics typing. I bet they can still sing the chorus to the song! 6th Grade has started a Christmas Around The World project that we will finish when they get back in January. Each student is researching how Christmas is celebrated in a different country and is creating a PowerPoint presentation about it. They are learning how to use the Outline feature in Word to take their notes and then transfer that to a PowerPoint presentation.  6th Grade’s Cyber-Bullying Comics and their Persuasive Turkeys have been added to our Travel Scrapbook. Take a look!

7TH GRADE: 7th Grade continued to finish up their Cyber-bullying Glogs and analyzed the final results for the Human Genetics project. We will be finishing these up when we return from the Christmas break. 7th Grade also tried the type the lyrics activity. Ask them to sing you the chorus to the song! As their main Christmas activity, each 7th Grader was told that they won a shopping spree to one online store. They had to create a spreadsheet in Excel that would keep track of what they bought and keep a running total of what they spent including sales tax. The catch was they had to spend between $995 and $1000 including tax. They had fun shopping and most of them managed to spend within that $5 range. A few students figured out that some stores have loss-leader products that sell for nothing or almost nothing so they used these to hit the magic $1000 even total. Check out the Travel Scrapbook for 7th Grade’s Cyber-Bullying Glogs and their Persuasive Turkeys.

8TH GRADE: Did your 8th Grader come home singing some Christmas song you had never heard? That’s because they spent a class typing the lyrics as they listened. It’s much harder than you think but there were a few students who got almost all the lyrics correct! 8th Grade also went on a Shopping Spree this month – okay not a real one but they did get to window shop. Before they could shop, each student had to create a spreadsheet in Excel that would keep track of what they bought and keep a running total of what they spent including sales tax. Then they could go and shop but the catch was they had to spend between $995 and $1000 including tax. They had fun shopping and most of them managed to spend within that $5 range. A few students figured out that some stores have loss-leader products that sell for nothing or almost nothing so they used these to hit the magic $1000 even total. Check out the Travel Scrapbook for 8th Grade’s Cyber-Bullying PSAs and their Persuasive Turkeys.