Blackland Prairie Elementary

Mrs. Scott created some TEKS based reading questions in order to review her classes on various reading concepts and TAKS strategies. She collaborated with Mrs. Beasley using the Turning Point (student response) system for this activity. The kids enjoyed choosing their answers on the remotes as well as seeing how well the entire class did on each question.

Both teachers enjoyed seeing the kids excited about showing what they’ve learned!

Mrs. Stork has created a blog for her class. The class is doing a book study and she uses the blog to pose questions to the students. The students leave comments on the blog in response to the question. The students are interacting with each other and the teacher.

This blog takes learning beyond the classroom! The students are able to respond in class, at home, from their cell phones, or wherever they have an internet connection. This encourages students to participate and it gives them an individual platform to have their ideas heard.

This is AWESOME Mrs. Stork! Check out the blog at http://5thgradetag.blogspot.com/

I had the awesome pleasure of working with Mrs. James and her students this morning in the computer lab. In class they wrote out the information and brought that to the computer lab with them. They pulled up a Venn Diagram template and started placing their info into the right sections. As her students worked on their science curriculum they learned very important technology skills. They learned how to insert text boxes, make them bigger and even move them around.

What I liked best was that they were recalling the information from their minds and labeling it in the right spots. They were all actively engaged and on task! Something tells me that they liked this project. Way to Hook’em Mrs. James! (Hook’em – is short for “getting them ready for college!”)

Mrs. Young’s class has been working on creating biographies. In their studies they have been researching historical figures and creating timelines. They even wrote poems that with it. At the end they publish a book. She is having the students use the digital camera to take pictures and turn them into a video to support their learning. Mrs. Young has plans for all students to create a photostory. Yes, this is 2nd Grade! How Awesome is that!?
Take a look at this fist completed video.

Mrs. Glaspie and her students have been down in the computer lab making use of the online Encyclopedia Britannica and Kid’s Infobits to do research. Each student is researching their own animals with the goal of sharing it in class. They have opened up the presentations to Power Points, and other forms of digital media.
From this the students are learning about their animal’s class, habitat, food sources, protection and defenses, as well as learning how to use technology. This sure sounds like an awesome project! I hope to see the results soon, so please do share. Before and during this process the students have mastered several Technology TEKS including logging in.
WAY TO GO FIRST GRADE! Second grade is going to love you!

Last week Mrs. Sellers and Mrs. Gustafson conducted a Charlotte’s Web Play with their classes. Not only did they conduct the play they also recorded it. After recording it they compiled and edited the video into a nice production for parents to see. If you have access to view their wiki pages stop by and take a look! That is an awesome way to use technology! Keep up that good editing and you could have a nice carrier ahead of you. No wait scratch that, we want you staying here with us!

Mrs. Orr’s class took the time last week to use their technology skills to communicate with a classmate that has been out sick. They used the Dell Children’s Hospital web page to send letters and digital eCards. So, not only were they being socially active they were working on their writing and tech skills! Way to go Mrs. Orr’s Class! I know your kindness will pay off and I’m certain that your letter writing will as well. Thanks for putting those tech skills to a good purpose!

This past week Mrs. Reyes had her 2nd grade class on Power Point creating some slide shows. In their slide shows they used pictures of their tree planting experience to work on their vocabulary. Their goal was to use organization and transitional words like: first, then, next, and after. During this process they are learning the importance of sequencing. This is going to be very helpful as they preparing for writing! Reyes also used this opportunity to differentiate in her classroom. This allowed each student to work on his/her skill level and use their own voice to describe the activates taking place in the picture.

That’s a great way to use Power Point Mrs. Reyes! Keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing more from your students! Take a look at this power point by one of her students!
the-planting-of-a-tree

WOW!

Ms. Cox has her Kinder students logging into the computers all on their own. They have created Word documents, saved files, navigated web pages and this week they visited our Library Resources page to use BookFlix.

Ms. Cox, good job preparing those kindergartener students for first grade! I look forward to your next project!

Last week we had several teachers participate in a workshop for PhotoStory 3. Our teachers learned how to take pictures from our digital cameras and turn them into a video production with voiceovers and music. We all shared ideas of how our teachers can use this program in the classroom and ideas for how they can have their students use it. Ideas like: Angle Hunts, Timelines, Noun Hunts, Talking Books, How to Vidoes, Photo Tours, About the Teacher/Student Videos, Visual Poems, Idiom Videos, Visual Dictionaries, and lots more! I hope to see some good projects coming from this soon! Check out the pictures below of our teachers taking pictures for their videos.