11/24/2014 November 24, 2014Our Wild Thing posts are now live and ready for your comments! In this project students searched Wikipedia for the wild animals whose parts made up their imaginary "wild thing". The previous post on this topic mentioned the variety of skills students were working on as they got in touch with their "wild sides". We hope you will visit our third grade blog page and view their creations. Just look for the category "My Wild Self" on the right. Almost all are published, but if a student's post does not appear that means he/she has a little something to finish up. Two more "wild students" are featured on the main Kidblog page.
10/16/2014 October 16, 2014Our latest third grade project involves a number of new skills as we "Build Our Wild Selves". The Wild Self tile on the webmix takes us to a fun website sponsored by the New York Zoo and Aquarium where students can use their imaginations while learning about wild creatures. On October 9 students created an image of their wild selves and saved the image to the desktop. This week they began searching for actual photos of the animals whose parts they used. We are using images from Wikipedia and students are learning to:
9/27/2014 September 27, 2014Third graders have finished their first blog post. It took 3 class periods to do all of the components but they are now ready for the world to read. The first week students wrote sentences following the prompts posted on the board. The second week they viewed the motivational story The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, in honor of International Dot Day. After discussing the story they used the ABCYa paint program (available on the Cougartech Webmix) to design their own dot creation. This week they learned how to insert their dot images into their saved sentences. The dot represents the mark they will make on the world by using their creativity, curiosity, and courage to try new things. Please visit their posts and leave a comment for some of the students. They need to know that what they write is being read by others. If you are the parent of the child who has written the post, please do not sign with your last name in order to protect the child's privacy. Using a Mom, Dad, Aunt Lucy, type signature will be just fine. Anyone outside the family is certainly welcome to leave a full name. You can also read my post about the project on the Kidblog site where other student dots are featured. After the dot was inserted the rest of the time was devoted to keyboarding, and we will spend a good amount of time on that this year, although never enough to develop the skill. I showed the boys and girls where to obtain the download for home use. (See Keyboarding in the left menu.) This will allow them to work on the same lessons they have been working on in school as their progress is saved to the cloud. If you have any questions about the use of the program at home, please email me. 9/17/2014 September 17, 2014Last week third grade began writing their first blog post. On Sept. 18 we will learn about International Dot Day and they will create their own "mark on the world".
I also forgot to give Mrs. Olson the Internet permission forms in time for the parent meeting on the 16th. My apologies. The students will be bringing them home this week. 9/4/2014 September 4, 2014Today was third grade's first visit to the computer lab this year. They learned about their special home page, which is our CougarTech webmix. This will be our jumping off point for most activities this year. They also discovered a direct link to their very own blogs. We will be posting a variety of items related to skills we work on or curriculum related projects. Please feel free to leave comments for your children when they publish a post. Their posts and your comments will all come through me for approval before going live. Every writer is anxious to know they have an audience. Students also have a slip of paper taped inside their HW assignment book. They will bring the book to class each week to help them remember how to log on to their keyboarding program and their blog, as well as getting into the SuccessNet site for the math and science books. Eventually they will no longer need this little help, and though I never recommend writing passwords down, our youngest users need this little help for a while because there are so many new things to adjust to in third grade. A big focus of third grade is keyboarding skills, also reviewed in other grades as well. Please read the information on keyboarding in class and consider downloading the Type to Learn 4 program for home use. It is free for home use by our students and the access code is available on the download page. It is a large download, but allowing them to continue their practice at home throughout the week will make a big difference for them. Once a week for 15 or 20 minutes in the computer lab does not allow them to make much progress on this very important skill. Since the program is web-based they will be able to pick up at home wherever they left off in school. I could see definite progress last year in those students who practiced at home. Please return the Internet permission forms as soon as possible and also please complete the School Reach contact survey on our school website. If ever you need to contact me please feel free to email. All teachers have the same account set up: last name, first initial @olphbeth.org. 6/20/2014 June 10, 2014 Third graders finished the year with the rainforest virtual field trip. Because of the short amount of time we had to work, I didn't expect them to be able to get to all the stops on the trip (although one young lady made it around the world and completed the ending quiz!) While they worked on their travels in Google Earth they also narrated the ecosystem dioramas in a Voice Thread. Take a look at their projects in the Voice Thread below. You are welcome to add your own comments via text or narration, but you need a free Voice Thread account to do that. All comments are approved by me before going live. Boys and girls are welcomed and encouraged to blog over the summer. I will check periodically to see if any new posts have been submitted. They can write about books they have read, places they have visited, or anything of interest they would like to share. It is a great way to continue learning through the summer months.
Also PLEASE encourage your child to continue keyboarding skills over the summer. If you have downloaded our free program, please have your child do a few minutes of practice a couple times a week. If you haven't downloaded the program all the necessary information can be found on the keyboarding skills page. Have a safe and happy summer. I would love to hear about it in a blog post! 5/18/2014 May 18, 2014We seem to be a bit crunched for time this year and we may not get all the projects completed that I had hoped. Last Thursday, I introduced students to the Rainforests Around the World field trip and we completed our first stop on the tour together. Next week I am hoping to have students come back one at a time into the "recording booth" in the back of the class to give an oral summary to go with their ecosystem diorama and possibly their science fair projects, since Mrs. Olson took photos of the projects. I am not sure if we will get both finished along with the field trip as there are really only 2 class periods left but I will give it a shot. I may just have to create a short video of one of the projects and have students narrate only one. Some students have not published all of their previous blog posts due to being absent so there is that issue as well. Time is not on our side this quarter. 4/25/2014 April 25, 2014We haven't had class for 2 weeks due to the Seder Meal on April 17 and my attendance at a workshop on April 24. This coming week we will be finishing up our posts on the Presidential Seal to share what we have discussed regarding they symbols. Students will be inserting an image and learning to credit a source of information at the bottom of the post. Once that is finished we will head over to Voice Thread where students provide a narrative for their shoebox dioramas. I will post the Voice Thread here when everyone has had their turn to record. They will also be placing their diorama images in a blog post. Please consider using the Type to Learn keyboarding program which you can download at home free of charge. We squeeze in keyboarding skills as often as we can. 4/6/2014 April 6, 2014Our posts are finished for Jack and the Beanstalk, and we invite you to read and comment! Matteo, Cole, and Gabby are featured student posts for this assignment. You can view all published posts under the category "Magic" on our Kidblog page. We have been using cut and paste (Ctrl + x, Ctrl + v) and also how to duplicate using (Ctrl + d) and how to undo (Ctrl +z). We have been working on keyboarding skills as well, although once again I would ask parents to consider downloading our free to use Type to Learn IV program at home so students may continue with their same level of practice. Coming up in fourth quarter (and it will be a tight squeeze) I hope to have students record their narration of the ecosystem report in a Voice Thread, as well as practice copying text using Ctrl + c when we study the symbols on the Presidential Seal. We may even get to our virtual field trip of rainforests of the world if things go as planned!
2/21/2014 February 20, 2014We have been working on the skills of cut, copy, and paste. Our recent activity was reordering the events of the Jack and the Beanstalk story to practice cutting and pasting sentences. Students then used MS Word drawing tools to create 5 "magic" beans and saved a snip of their beans as a JPEG image. They will be writing up an explanation of their keyboard shortcuts for these skill and sharing their beans in the post. During March we will be having our discussions of Internet Safety topics, learning about the Presidential Seal and using Kid Pix to re-create the seal, and also using the app "Explain Everything" on the iPads to demonstrate the process of 2-digit multiplication. March will be very busy, so please - "No More Snow!"
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