First Grade Goes on a Virtual Google Earth Tour

If you are a parent of a first grade student, you probably already know all about Google Earth, a virtual globe, map and geographic information program that can be downloaded for free. Words cannot express how excited the students were to visit the lab and participate in a Google Earth tour of landmarks around the United States. The students were first introduced to the program in their classrooms and allowed time to explore. Then they came to the lab on Monday to take a customized tour. Starting at Shorecrest, students travel to the following landmarks:

White House
Lincoln Memorial
Washington Monument
Statue of Liberty
Empire State Building
Niagara Falls
Grand Canyon
Mount Rushmore
Golden Gate Bridge
Independence Hall & The Liberty Bell

Each location was viewed in 3D. In addition, pictures and facts about each place were shared. Students answered questions about each stop on the tour.

The Last Great Race - The Iditarod

Students in 3rd grade are preparing to follow the Iditarod Sled Dog Race that begins on March 6th. The last two weeks, students have been learning about Alaska and the race by labeling a class map and participating in an Internet scavenger hunt. Each class will choose a musher to track and follow along in their classroom. In addition, the students will be participating in a race of their own, the Idita-Read. Students will mush from Anchorage to Nome virtually as they read 1,112 minutes to match the 1,112 miles of the actual race route. Children will visit the website http://www.idita-read.org/ to log their minutes each day. They will also have the opportunity to write book reviews to share with students around the United States.

2nd Grade Monsters Are Back!!!

One of my favorite computer lab projects is the Monster Project. Using monsters as a vehicle, students create monsters on the computer using the drawing program Early Learning Toolkit. Next, they write descriptive paragraphs in Microsoft Word describing their monsters. Many adjective-related activities both in the lab and classroom help the students think about powerful descriptions. Finally, our students exchange written descriptions with students from another school. There are more than 50 classrooms across the US and Canada participating in this year's project. Our partner schools are in Canada, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Illinois.

The second graders have drawn their monsters and began typing their descriptions today. Next week, each rough draft will have a new pair of eyes as they participate in the process of peer editing. Once suggestions are made and the drafts are edited, final copies will be uploaded to the project wiki.

Check out the wiki, http://monsterproject.wikispaces.com/Welcome, to learn more.

Third Graders Explore Scratch

Scratch is a programming language that teaches important mathematical and computational skills. The program also encourages students to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively by creating interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art. All of these projects can then be shared on the Web. Oh, and did I mention it is lots of fun too!

Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab with support from the National Science Foundation. It is a free download. You can download Scratch from http://scratch.mit.edu/download. The support area on the website has a Getting Started Guide along with answers to frequently asked questions and video tutorials.

Third grade students spent several class periods learning Scratch basics and exploring the program. Many students have already downloaded the program and started projects at home.

Fourth Grade Haz Jazz!

Fourth graders enjoyed presenting their Jazz multimedia projects to family and friends on Friday after their We Haz Jazz show. Using a rubric to guide their work, students created projects in MediaBlender combining text, music, and video. Projects were graded on content as well as design. Minimum requirements included a title page, timeline page, career page and resources page although every group added additional pages to their stacks. It was wonderful to see students working cooperatively and creatively. Projects will be posted online in the following weeks.