First Steps of Internet Research - 1st Grade

Even though it happened more than 40 years ago, first grade students were fascinated to watch Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon and claim, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Furthering their study on the solar system, students visited the lab to participate in an Internet scavenger hunt. After reviewing how to launch Firefox and vocabulary such as scroll bar, back button, home button and hyperlink, students visited this website to answer questions about the Sun, Moon, planets, asteroids, stars, constellations and asterisms.

Photo URL: http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/kids/sites/lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov.kids/files/footprint.jpg

The Write Stuff - 3rd Grade Literary Devices

As I mentioned in the previous post, students in third grade spent three weeks studying and using different literary devices in their writing. Working cooperatively, each pair of students created a six-page multimedia presentation. In addition to learning ways to make their writing more interesting and descriptive, they practiced a multitude of skills: using drawing tools, inserting and resizing graphics, navigating folders and creating interactive buttons. I was so impressed by the teamwork and cooperation shown by all the groups. Here is the link to the final projects.

Better Late Than Never

I apologize in advance for the lateness of this post. I actually wrote it on December 21st as a summary of the projects completed before Winter Break but just now realized I never published it. I hope you will still find the information interesting.

First Grade:
The second science unit of the year for first grade is The Solar System. After learning about the Sun in the classroom, the students visited the lab for an introduction on the planets. I was amazed at how much information the students already knew. We had many interesting conversations about how the planets were alike and different. This lead to a fun creative writing and drawing project where students created their own planet, named it, and described what it looked like.


Second Grade:
Writing poetry is always fun. Each second grade student was given a winter word. Then, using Early Learning Toolkit, he/she wrote an acrostic poem. This was a great opportunity to remind students about resting their thumbs on the space bar and hand placement while keyboarding.


Third Grade:
Third graders completed a multimedia project on literary devices using MediaBlender. A literary device is a writing technique that helps create meaning through language. Essentially, it allows writes to paint mental pictures with their words. Students learned about alliteration, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, personification, simile and metaphor and worked with partners to use these devices in their own writing. I will be publishing these projects and will share the link in a future post.

Fourth Grade:
Fourth graders continue to focus on keyboarding through direction instruction and typing games in Type to Learn 4. The students are finding the lessons more challenging as their goals for accuracy and words per minute have begun to increase.