Fourth Grade Choice Time

Arthur Meets the President

While the Kindergarten teacher was making her way to Washington, we talked about what Inauguration Day was about. I read the Kindergarteners Arthur Meets the President. Arthur wins an essay contest in the book by writing about how he believes people can make America great by helping each other – although he is extremely nervous about delivering his essay as a speech to the President himself.

I assigned a Google Slide to each of the Fourth Graders so that they could respond to the prompt, “What I Want the President to Know.” I showed them how to search for images and the children were very thoughtful as they typed their thoughts on the slides. We will finish up the presentation on Friday. I brought the draft of the slide show up to show their Eighth Grade buddies, who were suitably impressed with the Fourth Graders’ work!

Typing Class

Shhhh…. Who knew that we would love typing so much????

 

What’s Happening in Tech

This week, Sixth and Seventh Graders talked about web site credibility – knowing who the author is and what his/her credentials are; how the site is being funded and who is making the information available; and when was the site published. We looked at Sweet Search– a search engine that is an alternative to Google created for students’ use and vetted by “internet librarians.” We tried an experiment by searching for Hillary Clinton on both Google and Sweet Search to compare search results. There were definitely more Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and other like sites on the Google first page than on Sweet Search, whose citings included the New York Times, Washington Post, Hillary Clinton.com, Politico, and so on.

The children then did some research on topics for their science projects.

Third and Fourth Graders started their typing program.

 

The Water Princess

The Water Princess is a new book about a young girl in Burkina Faso who, with her mother, must walk long distances each day to collect water from a well for her family. It is based on the childhood experiences of Georgie Badiel, who grew up to be a fashion model, and remains committed to providing access to clean drinking water to the people of Burkina Faso.

We spoke about what people need clean water for and the difficulty of having to travel long distances to acquire it. We also discussed whether this book would be appropriate for younger children and how sometimes picture books are written to expose young children to sophisticated concepts. The Fourth Graders felt that The Water Princess would be a good read for the Kindergarteners who are studying water in their classroom.

Typing Testers

The Fourth Graders are helping me evaluate a new typing program to see if it is interesting, child-friendly, and fun!

Everyone tried some of the sample lessons and filled out a review sheet to let me know what they thought. Some of the comments:

Pro:

Not too much typing.

It was fun. It had a meaning.

There are activities instead of plain old typing.

I liked learning about how to write about fiction.

I liked that it was interactive and fun.

I learned a lot about plants. It was more fun than any typing thing ever.

You learn facts about real things while you type.

Con:

I would like it to be one sentence at a time.

It makes a noise every time you hit a key or get it wrong and when you finish and it’s annoying.

You finish and there are more words….