PowerPoint Booklet

My second graders have gone to the computer lab twice this week. They are studying communities in social studies and they completed a wonderful technology integrated project. They went to a word document that contained hyperlinks to three United Streaming Videos. The videos covered urban, suburban and rural areas. After each video the students were instructed to take three bullet point notes that told what could be found in each area. After that, they openned a PowerPoint that contained ten slides. The children copied their notes about each area, defined a community, gave an example of each community and explained which type of community they lived in. I taught them to insert pictures. When their PowerPoint was complete, they printed it using a handout with 6 slides per page format. They made a horizontal cut, cutting two pages out at a time. This was folded and became two consecutive pages. After cutting all the slides and creating pages, the pages were stapled together making an informative booklet. It was laborious, but the students learned a lot and the next time they complete a booklet it will go faster. This type of booklet can be completed for any content area.

2nd Grade

I have been in my new placement, 2nd grade, for two days now. The teacher uses technology everyday. She puts up a morning message using a PowerPoint slide. She is able to project the slide from her computer to the television for easier viewing for all students. I have taken over that duty for her. I made the morning message for Tuesday and Wednesday. The morning message greets the students, may contain a clipart picture that ties into a lesson for the day, and reminds them of their morning duties such as, unpack, write down your homework, begin working on Mountain Math, day 3. In addition, she takes attendance electronically. I took over that duty as well yesterday. I say hip-hip-hooray for 2nd grade. I have also seen students go to the computer to take AR tests and work on software called Imagination Station.

Class Books

Today was my last day in kindergarten. I feel I did not incorporate technology as much as I could have or should have. I did however leave the class with two class books. One was a creative writing type book the students made during rodeo week. They each received a page which said, "It used to be a bandana, but now it's a _________." We had covered cowboy gear and many uses of the bandanas for cowboy and the day before they were to complete their page we brainstormed other uses for a bandana. They each got a triangular piece of bandana to use in their pictures. The new uses included a dog bandana, girl's shirt, the roof of a house, the door to a house, a butterfly's wing, and a spider's body. The other class book the students made came from a math lesson. The students were learning about measurement. They measured each other using stars and I took a digital picture of each one. I was able to print their pictures in color and they attached it to a page which read, "________ is ____ stars long!" I also put the pictures into a PowerPoint presentation. I had a student present the books to the class and each student took turns reading their page. The books were then placed in the reading center which all the students take a turn visiting about every 6th day.