Quarter 2 is on the loose!

Welcome back! I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break and enjoyed time with family and friends. It such a blessing to reconnect with people that you haven't seen for awhile or even spend quality time with those that you may see on a daily or weekly basis.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Break is always jam packed with special concerts, performances, and activities that keep us constantly busy. Here in the lab, we are busy with the following things:

Grade 2 - 3:

Footprints in the Sand ~ This is an online lesson that we are using to help us navigate through sites when we are online. Some of the things that we talked about were scrolling, hot links, bookmarks, going back to the previous page, and what to do when the computer is loading (patience!!). I have posted a link to this activity on this blog. Look for it and have your student lead you through it. They will also be completing an assignment on being a detective on the internet and how to look for information.

Grade 4:

We've gone to the dogs. . . well, kind of. The fourth grade class is learning about the Keynote program and all of the bells and whistles that come with it. This is a great presentation tool, much like Power Point, that will help them in later years. For this project, each student is choosing the theme of the presentation, finding pictures of 10 dogs, and assigning one adjective per dog that describes it. They are having a blast!

Grade 5:

Computer Connections continues to be a great resource for this class and curriculum that I have used from the start of the school year. We have covered things such as the insides of the computer to memory and more. We are currently on storage and our vocabulary words for this week are Primary and Secondary Memory. Fifth grade students are also being introduced to some primary keyboarding skills. I have posted a link to Dance Mat Typing on my blog. This is something that they can do at home as well. Be careful with the volume, the goat's accent can get a little annoying.

Middle School:

Middle School always seems to have a lot of things going on at one time. We currently working on 3 projects, the first being "Mi Familia" which is the project information that I sent home over Thanksgiving Break. All pictures for this project where due on November 30th along with the project requirement sheet signed. Project number 2 deals with Copyright and Fair Use and Citing Sources. We will be discussing the law and how to properly give credit to the people/places they retrieve their information from, focusing on the internet. And last, but not least, our third area of concentration is keyboarding. This will not change for the entire year.

Needless to say, we are all busy in the lab learning and having fun. I will be out on Monday, December 7th attending a Smart Board workshop in St Cloud.

5th Grade Keyboarding

Dance Mat Typing

Surfing the Net ~ Learning the basics

Footprints in the Sand

Sheppard Software

www.sheppardsoftware.com/math.htm

The MAPs are coming, the MAPs are coming!!

Next week, all students in grades 1 - 8 will be participating in the NWEA Mapping Academic Progress (MAPs) testing. This will be the first year that St Francis Xavier students are taking these standardized-based tests. Test Taker, NWEA's web based test-taking application, allows us to test our students on Minnesota standards for each grade level, compile the data, review the data, and better serve our students.

Grades 6 - 8 will take 3, 1 hour tests on math, reading, and science. Grades 2 - 5 will take 2, 1 hour tests on math and reading. After the results are sent to the company, they compile the data and send it back to us. We print the results and send them home to you. Interpreting new data is sometimes difficult and scary, we as a staff want to make understanding the results easy for you. No time is set yet, but we would like to be able to teach you how to read your child's scores and understand what they mean.

Testing takes A LOT of concentration and energy. Please make sure that your child gets a good nights rest, a filling and brain-happy breakfast, and send a healthy snack to school ; almonds, trail-mix, or fruit to keep their brain full of energy. They will most likely miss some time with their other specialist teachers, therefore their classroom teacher will make sure that they are able to move their bodies during the day, another way to keep their brain happy.

Thank you for your partnership in your child's learning journey.

Quarter 1 is wrapping up

Our first quarter of the 2009-2010 school year is coming to a close and so we are wrapping up projects and activities in the lab. During conferences, I will be located in the gym if you wish to talk with me. I will also have given each of your child's teachers work samples from the last few months.

Here is what we are working on now:

Grade 2 : I found a great new link to a web site from a Belle Plain school with an abundance of activities/games that focus on Reading Comprehension and Math skills. We will be using this site to help us get ready for the MAPS tests that we are taking soon. The website is :

www.belleplaine.k12.mn.us

Grade 3: I am increasingly impressed with this grade level's ability to locate a website and retrieve information from it without help. That is AWESOME! We are doing some collaboration with the social studies curriculum and technology by researching Native American tribes during computer class, recording the information, and taking it back to the classroom to use for their group projects.

Grade 4: The fourth graders are becoming more and more familiar with the Pages Word Processing program. They are currently working on a paragraph (keyboarding the text themselves) by underlining and changing the color of words which they will change by using the Thesaurus on www.webstersdictionary.com .

Grade 5: Fifth grade has been hard at work since the beginning of the year learning vocabulary words, parts of the computer and what they do, checking out the inside of a computer and more. All of that knowledge will culminate with a Quarter 1 test, which we are reviewing for now. They will be bringing their vocabulary words home this weekend to help them study for their test on Monday, November 9th.

Middle School: Our focus in the Middle School this quarter has generally being Cyber Smart and decoding/dissecting web sites to check if they are credible sources of information. Next quarter we will be working on a Spanish/Technology Project "Mi Familia". Each student will need to bring various pictures of themselves(involved in their favorite hobby, with their pet(s) during a vacation, etc), their entire family, their siblings, and their pet(s). Students may bring the flash drive home from school load pictures onto it and transfer them to their computer at school or if you have pictures on a disk, that would work as well. Hard copies of pictures can be brought to Target, scanned, and burned onto a disk. Please call me with questions, I would be happy to discuss it with you.

Have a wonderful rest of the week!!

Internet Safety

A focus of ours for the last week has been internet safety. Some of the topics that all classes have been focusing on are:

- What kind of information is safe to share.

- What is a Privacy Policy? We actually looked at the Webkinz privacy policy for an example.

- If someone is saying mean things to you on the computer, what should you do?

- Spam, cookies, and junk mail.

Here are the sites that the classes have visited:

Grades 2 -3 : www.pbskids.org/license/ ~ Web License

Grade 4: www.media-awareness.ca ~ Virtual Pigsty

Grades 6 - 8: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/games/jocool_jofool/kids.cfm ~ Jo Cool or Jo Fool

Ask your kids about what they have learned and how to be safe online!

Cruisin' Along

We find ourselves in the middle of October thinking, what happened to September?? Well, it flew by kind of like the snowflakes that I see falling to the ground. REALLY?? Luckily, there is never a snow day in the Computer Lab. Here is a breakdown of what we have been working on:

Grade 2 -3

Independence on the computer is something that we work on each class period in the lab with things such as turning the computer on, logging in, finding the icons in the dock or on the desktop, opening new documents and saving them to the desktop. All of the students are doing amazingly well, especially the second grade classes as this independence is more of an adjustment for them.

Some of the projects that we have been working in second grade on are: All About Me, Cloudy with a Chance of . . . and What I like to do in the computer lab. All About Me and What I like to do in the Computer Lab will be available to come home after conferences. Cloudy with a Chance of. . . is a class project, we read the story and each student made their own page for their class book about what type of food they would like to see raining from the sky. Look for it in your child's classroom during your conference time.

Projects that the third graders are working hard on are: Learning all of the parts of the computer and whether they are input or output, All About Me and Biography Poems.

Grade 4 and 5

No slacking going on here! Fourth graders have been hard at work with Biography Cards. With this project the students learned how to make and manipulate a table on a Pages Document. They also learned how to add their picture to the table from Photoshop. The directions where given to them in written form and they had to complete this task on their own. They passed with flying colors!! Next up, we will be piggy backing on the table making skills along with collaborating with Mrs. Basten's religion curriculum by making Saint Trading Cards.

Fifth grade students have been hard at work learning technology definitions, exploring the insides of computer towers and completing an online study about the earliest computer and how they have progressed into the computers that we use today. Quiz them on the name of the first computer!!

Middle School

Last but certainly not least, the Middle School Students are constantly working on something. Here is a run down of what has been happening with them.

- You are the Star Presentations by Grade 6 & 7

- I Think Presentations by Grade 8

- All About Me using Comic Life by Grade 8

- Comic Strips by Grade 6, 7, & 8 - look for these on the wall outside the lab

- Jo Cool Jo Fool by all Middle School Students. This is an online activity that takes the students through different web sites asking for various kinds of information. They have to figure out if they are going to be "Jo Cool" or "Jo Fool".

- Online keyboarding lessons.

As always, please stop by or call anytime you have questions or concerns.

Have a blessed MEA Break!!

Rockin' and Rollin' . . .

We certainly are moving along in the lab, each class is diligently working on something new and exciting. Here is a quick run down of what we are doing.

Grades 2 - 3

For the past week and a half, both of these classes have been studying the different parts of the computer and building a word wall with words such as keyboard, monitor, scanner, printer, surge protector, mouse and speakers. We are also learning which of these parts are INPUT or OUTPUT parts. Ask your student about it, they are doing very well. They will be quizzed on these parts and whether they are input or output next week. To practice their new knowledge, we have been visiting the site www.abcya.com and playing the games Computer: Input and Output and Computer Vocabulary under the third grade section. Try out the website for other fun and educational games at home. Next week we will be working in Kidspriration on an All About Me project.

Grades 4 - 5

Computer parts and Input/Output parts have also been a part of the curriculum for these grades. Fourth grade will be working on putting together their dream computer system with a certain number of input and output components required.

Fifth grade has started the year of with a bang! They now have daily vocabulary words that they must add to a vocabulary document and will be tested on the words bi-weekly. We will be dissecting computer towers in the coming weeks and finding things such as the motherboard, expansion cards, and the CPU for starters.

Gator ball has been introduced as a fun and competitive way to practice our vocabulary words. We use a "tape ball" and a garbage basket in this game. FUN, FUN!

Middle School

What a blast!! It is so fun to see them getting more and more comfortable with the Macs and what they can do. Each class has been working in Keynote on presentations about themselves. Sixth and seventh are working on something called " You are the Star" and eighth grade is working on something called " I Think . . ." They are all looking fantastic and each student will be presenting their project we in class next week. This helps with completing projects by a deadline, speaking in front of their peers and expressing and thinking about themselves.

Tuesday, September 22nd

Mrs. Bettenberg and I will be attending an Accelerated Reader Workshop in Marshall, MN and will be out for the day.

Have a great weekend!! GET THOSE PLEDGES!!!!

Welcome Back, students and families!

Here we are with another school year ahead of us and so many opportunities to learn and grow.

It was great to see many familiar, and new, faces at the Open House. It always amazes me at how much the students change over the summer. But, now that lazy days of sleeping in and hangin' at the beach are behind us, we must jump into great things that await!!

NEW IN THE LAB is KidPix which was purchased with the $5 technology fee that each student paid before the year started. THANK YOU! This fun software program can be used from kingergarten all the way through eigth grade. We have the ability to reconstruct habitats learned in science, places around the world studied in social studies, make fun and silly movies and much, much more. We also purchased Trudy's Time and Place and Bailey's Bookhouse, both excellent k-2 software to compliment Trudy's Time and Place and Sammy's Science House. We will be purchasing software for 3 -5 grades with our next rotation.

Another new feature is the way that the students will be accessing the computers. Each student will be logging in to their own customized desk top. Here is where they will find all of the projects and documents that they have worked on in class. No more dealing with the folders that we had plastered all over the desk top last year. To log in, they will look for their name and picture and type in a log in code that only they know. This will allow the students to protect their work and the teachers, Mrs. Bettenberg and I, to enable to Parental Controls on each computer limiting access to programs and changes that we don't want the students to make.

MARATHON - You all know about the Marathon and how important this fundraising is for our school. For the 2009 Marathon, I am happy to announce that we will even further the technology intergration into our classrooms with the addition of (hopefully) 2 Smart Boards. These Smart Boards allow teachers and students to take each subject to the next level. Depending on how many pledges we receive and the actual money that comes in, we are hoping to get a Smart Board in one third grade classroom and fourth or fifth grade classroom before the school year is over. Please check out the Smart Technologies website at http://smarttech.com/ for more information and a tutorial on their products.

GOING GREEN - I encourage each family to check out all blogs posted by teachers as a GREEN way of knowing what is happening in your child's classroom. With money being tight just about everywhere, this is a free and easy option for both teachers and parents. CHECK OUT YOUR TEACHER'S BLOG TODAY! I also encourage you to get your email addresses to your child's teacher. Communication via email is an easy sollution to the, " I lost it" problem when you are expecting a paper to come home. Plus, IT'S FREE!

Again, welcome back. I am looking forward to another great year at St Francis Xavier!

So long students!!

Here we are at the end of our 2008 - 2009 school year. What a blast we have had this year with all of the amazing projects and web sites that we have worked on. I am sad to see all of the students go, but will be thrilled to see them again this fall.

Summer is full of sun and fun, but if you happen to encounter a cloudy, rainy day, here are a few websites to keep your kids engaged in learning even when they think that they are just playing games.

Grades Kindergarten thru Second -  

Reading: www.starfall.com, www.pbskids.org, www.bookpals.net/storyline,www.literactive.com, www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/menu.shtml

Math: www.mathisfun.com, www.aplusmath.com/Games/index.html, www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/numbers/chi.shtml

Grades Third thru Fifth-

Reading: www.intothebook.com, www.bookadventure.com, 

Math: www.mathisfun.com,  www.mathplayground.com

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

Have a super summer and see you in the fall!!

Can I just speak with an actual person, PLEASE??

Have you ever needed some assistance with your computer, cable tv connection, or cell phone service called the 1-800 number and spoke with the computerized voice who takes you in circles for what seems like hours??? What ever happened to making a phone call and speaking with an actual live human being??

I have found a fantastic web site that prompts you to skip all of the "yes" & "no" prompts and head directly to that wonderfully human voice on the other end.

Check out www.gethuman.com before your next big call and hopefully it will save you time and sanity.

Noses to the Grindstone!

We have been back at work for two weeks now and things are certainly on a roll! Each class has so many fantastic things happening that it is hard to keep up.

Second Grade has been diligently researching their chosen desert animal and printing out a picture. They used their research to make a bubble map using the Kidspiration program. This program has proven to be so amazing on many different levels.

Third Grade students are making Keynote Presentations (Macs version of the PowerPoint) about emotions. As a class we brainstormed about different emotions that we feel, then we practiced what our faces would look like for those particular emotions. They then chose 5 emotions to feature in their presentation. Using the built in cameras in the computers, each student took a picture of their faces portraying each of their chosen emotions. Some of them thought long and hard about how their mouth, eyes, and body posture should be. Next week we will be working on adding slides, uploading pictures and text.

Fourth Grade has been traveling the world with Google Earth. What fun it is to look up the Eiffel Tower, The Forbidden City, and even our own houses!! In groups, the students learned how to place mark locations around the world. Next week, we will be using the ruler tool in the Google Earth program to measure the distances between our place marks!

Fifth Grade tried to work with the Dance Mat Typing online program for keyboarding, but we have been experiencing some problems with that. BUMMER! It is both fun and makes learning those much needed keyboarding skills fun. Next week we will be talking about what HTML is, what is stands for, and how it is used!!

Sixth and Seventh Grade classes have been working on the web design of their weebly pages. Each student has picked a theme, site title, and has had a few postings. We have also learned what a widget is ( anything that can be embedded into a page with HTML such as a stock market ticker, a clock, a map  pin pointing  places you have been) and how to post them onto their pages. Some of them have really taken off!! We will continue to work on these projects.

Eighth Grade students are taking a walk down memory lane while working on their project for the fourth quarter, a Memories of St Francis iMovie. So far they have loaded pictures onto their computers, moved those pictures into the iMovie program and are working on putting them into chronological order. Next up will be setting the duration of and placing transitions between each slide.

WHEW!!  We are busy and having a great time.

Happy Easter.

Can't wait to get back

As I sit here, comfy in my bed, I can't help but think about getting back into the classroom and start working on all of the new projects that I have in store for fourth quarter. Yes, it sounds crazy and I have to admit I have never been on Spring Break before and thought about work so much, but I am so excited to add more to my curriculum.

The eighth graders have a lot of work ahead of them. They will be working on their own iMovie for the entire quarter, completing tasks such as uploading pictures from different media sources, adding music, transitions between slides and making this movie their very own.

Simple web design will be the focus for the sixth and seventh graders when they return to class, along with dabbling in Podcasts. How cool would it be for them to have the announcements as a Pod cast???? All of the primary students will be studying the desert, so to integrate technology each student will research an animal native to the desert region of study and will also construct a desert habitat using the Kidspiration software. Third grade will have their hand at making a Keynote Presentation on emotions. This will be very interesting as they will have to think about what makes them happy, sad, excited, scared, etc. , take pictures of themselves with those expressions and copy and paste them into the presentation. Again, I can't wait.

I am still thinking about what I have up my sleeve for fourth and fifth grade. I would love to get some digital cameras and explore shapes and patterns in nature. One thing we will definately be doing is a collaborative project with JenuineTech named, Oh The Places You Will Go! using Google Earth.

I can't wait . . . until then, Have a safe and relaxing Spring Break.

Views of the World from Your Classroom

As we enjoy this wonderfully crisp Minnesota weather. . . wait, I am not enjoying it anymore. Are you??? 

How awesome would it be to check out other parts of the world from the comfort of your own home or classroom?! Web Cams can offer that to us. Using a web cam can enhance curriculum from science, to social studies, to geography, and more.

Check out this cool web cam showing off the Pandas at the San Diego Zoo:

www.sandiegozoo.com/pandacam/index.html

The next time that you have a unit of study check to see if there is a web cam available related to it. What a great opportunity for your students/child to see something that they might otherwise have not seen.

Kid-Friendly Search Engines

With so many projects and so little time, the internet is a wonderful tool to use for fact finding.

There is so much information out there just waiting to be found with one small problem, some of the content that pops up it's exactly what your student is looking for, nor is it what you want them to see. Luckily, there are some great kid-friendly search engines and I have listed them below for you:

Quintura Kids - This is a great site for 6th grade and up

KidsClick! - This site provides over 600 subject areas and it provides the reading level for its material

Little Explorers Dictionary- Also called Enchanted Learning, this site provides great information with easy to read text for grades 2 and up.

Ask For Kids - Super site where you can filter the information by kids, teens, or advanced teen. This site is from the makers of Ask Jeeves.

All of the links that are posted above are hot-links, meaning you should be able to click on the blue words and it will take you directly to the site.

I hope that the next time your child comes home and says, "Mom and Dad, I have to find out some stuff about The Revolutionary War. . . . by tomorrow. " You will have a wealth of knowledge at your finger tips.

Here We Go!

I attended a fantastic workshop today about using technology in the classroom and I have come to the conculsion that we are doing about 2% of what we could possibly be doing. As I am coming down from my "workshop high", I am trying to think about what I should start first and the blog won.

Using a blog is a fantastic way to communicate with parents and the best part is, it's FREE!! On the blog I will post what we are doing in class, web sites we have visites, sites for you to visit at home, examples of student work, pictures and video (all with parent permission of course!). I will also be encouraging the rest of the STFX staff to start their own blogs as an effective way to commincate classroom information and goings-on throughout the school.

So, welcome to the very first blog! Enjoy!