My Classes Current Projects

Here is what my classes are currently working on:

Kindergarten is hearing stories about families and are practicing cutting by creating unique faces using pictures cut out of magazines. Scissors & Kindergartener always make for an exciting activity!

First Grade & Third Grade are both studing quilt so I have read The Kindness Quilt & The Name Quilt. The First Graders are making kindness quilt squares in Pixie. The Third Graders are using Pixie to create a name quilt square with their name & then writing personal narrative stories about themselves. The students are having a great time expressing their creativity through their quilt squares. My dilema is that it would be cool to print them in color but I worry about using too much color ink.

Second Grade is studying owls so the students are using www.enchantedlearning.com to find owl facts. We are discussed plagarism & practiced writing the facts in our own words. The students are recording the facts in Word. They have learned to place the web site & the word document side by side--they think it is very cool! Finally the students will be making owl puppets to display a fact of their choosing.

Fourth Grade is studying animal habitats. I am having the students use www.enchantedlearning.com to research a mammal of their choice--I asked that they choose a mammal they knew nothing about & was not a pet or farm animal-- a few weren't happy about this but I was trying to make sure that they were doing research not just pulling facts out of their own brains. We discussed plagarism also.

Fifth Grade is exploring our unique Earth. Using the site www.exploratoruim.edu they calculated their weight & age on the planets---great fun for everyone! They are gathering additional facts about the planet they choose.

1st Quarter

Wow, where did first quarter go!
I'm working on increasing the integration of the grade level themes into my Library Media lessons. I have asked the grade level team leaders to send me the themes their team will be working on in the 2nd quarter. I have received 1 set of themes so far--disappointing but my classroom teachers are so very busy. I will just have to keep trying. Lack of time is a huge issue for everyone. There never seems to be enough time and there is always more to do!

Cyber Safety

Time has just gotten away from me. Here are some of the good sites for parents and students on cyber safety.

Safety for Kids on the Internet--Child and Teen safety on the Information Highway
Get Wise on the Net (Online Safety)--Listed are a few simple steps for keeping kids safe online
C.L.I.C.K.S--Community Leadership In Cyber Knowledge and Safety
NetSmartz--Games and activities on Cyber Safety (partnership with C.L.I.C.K.S.)
WiredKids--Games and activities on Cyber Safety
Internet Keep Safe--Lessons on keeping kids safe online

If you have access to Tumble Books there are two cyber safety stories located there. The names of the stories are: Little Red in Cyber Space and Surfing Safely.com.

On the technology pretest that I gave my 4th and 5th Graders, many of them missed the question about web browsers. I went searching online, and found a great video clip. Click here to see it. But since it was posted on youtube, it wouldn't play at school. So I learned how to save a youtube video. Click here to see the directions I followed. It was A LOT easier than I tought it would be.

Stacey