Teach Your Parents

Thursday is Teach Your Parents Computers night for first and second grades. Students can bring in their parents or other adults to teach them how to do different things on the computer. First grade students will be teaching their guests how to type on the home row. Second grade students will be helping their guests make a slide show in Microsoft PowerPoint. The lab will be open from 5:30 to 7:00 pm for people to stop by.

Hats Off to the Months

This week first grade students reviewed the months of the year. We read the book 12 Hats for Lena and each student drew a hat based on their birthday month. Students decorated the hat using the fill bucket and the different groups of stamps.

SMART Notebook Express

SMART Notebook Express is an online tool for viewing SMART Notebook files. It is a great way for students to use Notebook on our new mini-laptops. Below are directions for opening files from the Student Shared folder.

Slide Show Stars

Second and third grade classess have been working three weeks on some excellent slide shows. Second grade students created slide shows about Charlevoix. Third grade researched interesting facts about planets and put them into a slide show. Both grades adjusted layouts, spell-checked and proofread, and added images. Third grade students experimented with animations.

Professional Development: Reveals and Laptops

It has been a busy time for teacher learning here at Charlevoix Elementary School. Not only did teachers have to listen to me talk about SMART Notebook last Wednesday, They had to listen again today about laptops. Here is a video reviewing Wednesday's professional development: reveals. Teachers can find copies of the Notebook files from both days in the SMART folder in the staff shared space.

Stamps

This week kindergarten students are trying out stamps in Kid Pix. After listening to the story There's an Alligator Under My Bed, students draw a bed and stamp three things under it. After printing, they get to try out more stamps or do some more drawing.

Great States Web Pages Coming Soon

This week marks the start of the fourth grade web page project. Each student chose a state for the subject of their page. They researched and recorded interesting facts about their state. Next week they will write a paragraph from those facts. The following two weeks will be spent working on artwork for their page. The week after that will be for typing it up, and lastly one more week for the finishing touches. All in all, this will be a six week project, barring any snowdays! Check back here by the end of February to see the final results. Click here to see last year's pages: The Winter Olympics.

Enchanted Learning

Enchanted Learning is a great web site. It has grade level information and pictures for kids and activities and resources for teachers. When printing, please print in black and white as much as possible, and please only print one copy and make the others on a copier. Most of the resources are free. Charlevoix Elementary School has a member subscription for its staff. I sent the information out earlier this year, but drop me an email if you need it again.