2nd Quarter: Week of October 29, 2012

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Welcome Back!  I hope everyone had a nice Fall Intersession break!  I did.  I traveled to Riviera Maya, Mexico.  The weather was really warm!  We saw lots of animals including quatis!  Here are a few pictures I took:

 
This week marks the first week of the 2nd Quarter.  This quarter fourth grade joins Technology Lab.  Welcome 4th grade!  Here's an introduction to the lab this year:


Kindergarten:
Although the kindergarten students still haven't grown tired of ABCYA.com and Starfall.com its time to add a new website to the mix.  This quarter we will add in ABCMouse.com where the students will get a chance to work on some basic skills.  ABCMouse is a website that is subscription based but is currently free to public schools.  Its curriculum contains 6 levels for preschool and kindergarten students.  We're excited to give it a try!

1st-2nd Grade:
This week is Halloween!!  We'll continue to practice our Microsoft Word skills.  This week we'll focus on the following:

  • Opening Microsoft Word
  • Typing 4 sentences using Capital letters, punctuation, and proper spacing
  • Adding Halloween Clip Art from the Insert menu
Students that have Studyladder.com accounts will also work on that site this week.  Second graders will continue to strengthen their keyboard recognition skills using LetterBubbles.com.

We'll also take a look at Brainpopjr.com/games to see what games are available in science, reading, writing, health, math, arts and technology.

3rd-4th Grade:
Third and fourth grade students will do all the same things as 1st & 2nd grade but will also focus some of their lab time on Kidbiz3000.



5th-8th Grade:

 

Although we are done formally talking about social media every now and then examples that are relevant to us come up.  If you have a chance go back and look at our E-subscription to the Chicago SunTimes.  Sunday October 21 had some articles about social media and how it is fueling cyber-banging.  Sunday October 28 also had social media articles about rappers.  Be sure to take a look.

Starting this quarter each classroom grades 3-8 will be working in KidBiz3000 or Teenbiz3000 for the first 20 minutes of lab.  Some of you have already been doing this, but it will be new to other classrooms.

Media Literacy Test/Media Literacy Project:
The Media Literacy tests have not been graded yet.  There are still classrooms that need to take the test.

Each student in grades 5-8 is responsible for creating a media literacy project.  Details are below:


ISTE NETS covered this week:


  • 1a:  apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
  • 5a: advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology
  • 5c: demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning
  • 6a: understand and use technology systems
  • 6b: select and use applications effectively and productively
  • 6d: transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies

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