Tasty Graphing in First Grade

What could be more fun than graphing Skittles candies and then eating them? First graders enjoyed working with the program The Graph Club to do just that. After sorting and counting their Skittles, each student recorded the results from their individual bags on a teacher-created template. Next, they were asked to use the program's note box to write two sentences describing their graph along with a model number representing their bag. This activity was a fun hands-on way to explain how bar graphs and pie charts are useful tools to display numerical information.

Second Graders Use Neighborhood Map Machine

Learning about maps and globes are essential skills of the second grade curriculum, and a great way to give students hands on experiences with maps is using the program Neighborhood Map Machine. Neighborhood Map Machine allows students to explore different kinds of maps as well as create maps of their own. Lessons and activities within the program include learning about concepts such as grid coordinates, location, scale, and compass navigation.

During the first week with the program, students learned how to read grid coordinates to add symbols to a grid map. This week, they will use the program's compass to navigate various maps to solve mysteries. Next week, they will take on the role of cartographer as they begin designing their own map by adding roads, buildings, parks, street symbols, bodies of water, parks, etc. The students will also be challenged to write directions to navigate between two buildings on their map.

Word Processing & Keyboarding in Fourth Grade

A major goal of the fourth grade technology curriculum is to ensure students are comfortable with basic word processing skills such formatting and aligning text. Students practiced underlining, bolding, and highlighting text, changing font types and sizes, centering titles by creating Wacky Web Tales, and cutting and pasting text. They also practiced saving documents by navigating the Finder. They were introduced to the concept of a remote server for saving work and practiced logging in to the server using their own username and passwords. Using a server will help students work on files from multiple locations.

This week, students will continue to use Microsoft Word to publish a Spanish writing assignment. They will also be introduced to the program Type to Learn 4 to develop touch typing skills. Students will keyboard 20 minutes twice a week progressing through 34 lessons and 6 assessments at their own pace. Type to Learn 4 provides demonstration, practice, and assessment, with continuous reinforcement on the home row, ASDF JKL;. It teaches proper fingering for each key (letter, number, symbols) and emphasizes both accuracy and words per minute speed. Speedskins are also used to reinforce memorization of the keys. Many students will surpass the year end goal of 15 words per minute (WPM) with 95% accuracy.