The 1st and 2nd graders played iSpy last week. That was fun. This week we’re going to try to make a class comic book using Comic Life. We’ll see how that goes–I’m a little nervous! I made this class Comic Life page using the first grade pictures they took in PhotoBooth.

The third graders also started working on Comic Life last week. They are working in groups to retell a fairy tale as a comic. They just played around with it last week, learning how to use the program. Next week they will begin actually creating the comics.

The fourth grade continues to be hard at work on researching their cloud forest animals. This week some of them will hopefully be ready to begin creating the website at weebly.com. Their Inspiration documents are filled with information on their animals, so the website creation should be a fun ending to the project. Here is an example of a completed inspiration document:

The fifth graders have spent the past few tech times working on Wikispaces and completing a social studies project for Teacher Karen on voyages. They are typing up log entries and researching a voyage here in the lab. They will move into a poetry unit on wikispaces after spring break, so we are prepping for that by becoming experts on the wiki right now.

The sixth grade has embarked on a FUN project with art, science, and technology. We are working with PicoCrickets to create robots that represent inventions. They are building and programming their robots in science, bringing them to life in art, and filming and making a video about their experience in technology, while also researching their inventions and writing about them for a final project. It’s overwhelming but fun. More on that to come!

Since I usually teach 6th grade today and they are in Costa Rica, the day has been very quiet in the lab. Just little old me typing away down here, planning lessons and meeting with Teachers Sharon and Amy to plan our robotics unit that will be coming up in a few weeks. Before they left, I worked with the sixth graders on iMovie, practicing a little so they are ready to use it to make photo slideshows of their trip when they return next week.

For the rest of this week I’ll be out at the Teachers New to Quakerism workshop at Pendle Hill. So I won’t be back myself until next week. The students will be hard at work in the lab on First in Math while I’m gone.

‘Till next week!

I’ve created a wikispaces page for the sixth graders. On this site I’ve asked them to write information about our projects so far this year. I’ve also given them a discussion section where they can login and post discussion topics that relate to the sixth graders. They’ve also been adding to the book review wiki that was started by a teacher at Shipley. It’s great to see that schools from various cities are now adding book reviews.

The fifth graders finished their digital storybooks on Dr. King, and we will watch them all in class on Friday and do a little reflection on what they did well, what they could do better, and what they thought of the project as a whole. All of their videos can be viewed on my youtube page.

The fourth graders continue to work on their animal research, while the third graders, who are deep into their study of fairy tales, will begin this online fairy tale game that I found. I found that website, as well as many others that I use in the lab, from Larry Ferlazzo’s blog.

Finally, the second graders are going to catch up on some First in Math this week, while I promised the first graders that we would play with Photobooth. I’m thinking that I will have them experiment with taking their pictures, and then have them pick their favorite and we will make some kind of slideshow with the pictures–haven’t quite figured that out yet!

The third graders wrote about MLK in Word and then drew pictures to accompany their documents in Tux Paint. They practiced capturing the pictures and inserting them into their Word documents.

Finally, the fifth graders made digital storybooks in iMovie about Dr. King and his impact on their lives. Two can be seen here:

Griff’s iMovie about Dr. King

Turner’s iMovie about Dr. King

More of those to come on Monday!

The 2nd graders also finished their “About the Author” documents in Word. In addition to typing, they learned how to select and format the size, type, and color of the font.

Finally, the 4th graders started their Cloud Forest animal research, putting their notes in Inspiration. That will continue for the next few weeks.

The sixth graders came to the lab right after Meeting for Worship and many students were feeling particularly distraught and emotional. Since we’re using Glogster anyway, I encouraged some of them to Glog about Teacher Jen.

Here is what they came up with:

Jen in our Hearts

Another one

The sixth graders finished their Scribblemaps of Costa Rica.

They have now moved on to playing around with Glogster and will start creating Glogs about Martin Luther King and some of his speeches.

Last week the first graders made book covers for their How To books in Tux Paint. I have to go print them now.

The second graders started writing “About the Author” pages in Word, which was an interesting first experience with real typing. They will continue those this week.

Finally, the fourth grade finished their blogs of Spain and will begin researching animals of Costa Rica and collecting their information in Inspiration maps, but for this week they are going to catch up on First in Math and Typing Pal!

The fourth graders continue their work on their blogs. They should be done by next week.

The sixth graders are working hard on their Scribble Maps on Costa Rica and will be done on Thursday, so I’ll post some pictures then.

The big news today is that the fifth graders finall finished their movies! They can be seen here:

FSH movie #1

FSH movie #2

FSH movie #3

On Thursday, the 1st and 2nd graders will continue typing and then play some math games on this new site that my son told me about. He played it at school.

No school Friday because of professional development day. I will do a session about Skype with teachers, as well as a session on gmail and Word. Have to go work on that.

The fifth graders almost finished their movies about FSH. They’ll be done on Monday and then we’ll upload them to youtube.

Finally, the third graders completed their study of Native Americans by creating Venn diagrams in Kidspiration, comparing and contrasting their lives now to the Native American tribes they studied.

The fourth grade came back on Monday and resumed their research of their cities in Spain. I’ve created the shells of the blogs they will add their content to. They can be found here (password for city-specific blogs is ‘fshblog’):

http://citiesinspain.tumblr.com/

The fifth grade continued their movie projects. I took an iMovie class at the Apple store over the break so I shared my new skills with them and they started putting their footage into new projects on iMovie. The deadline for this project is next Monday so we can move on to a digital storytelling project about Dr. King.

Today the sixth graders spent the class playing math games. They have a lot of energy–it spreads. I had to show them how it’s done and complete the hardest level Ken Ken game (for proof, see below). They played Ken Ken and the Set Puzzle. They couldn’t get enough, until recess that is…

Tr Amanda's triumphant Ken Ken game