Kindergarten and the US Elections

I just wanted to share a great lesson from our Kindergarten teachers.  In preparation of the Presidential elections in the USA, they used an interactive Electoral College map from Yahoo on the SmartBoard. The map allowed them to pick a map of neutral states, ready to be changed into a Republican or Democratic one.

One click turned the state red, a second click turned the state blue.

Here you see the predictions of one of our Kindergarten class (We live in a very conservative area):

The day after the elections, the class returned to TechConnect to use the SmartBoard to turn the states the color they were voted in the election.

What an amazing lesson the teachers prepared for their 5 year old students!Talk about cross subject integration: Geography, History, Math, Language, Social Studies …

Students especially learned from the interactive bar on the bottom that moved as they added a red or a blue state.

Keyboarding Again… I Can Live With That

So, as a follow up to my previous posts about typing and keyboarding practice

• Necessity for Keyboarding Skills in Elementary School? and
• Keyboarding Program at Elementary Schools )

here is a lesson that worked well with our 4th graders.

After explaining to students what a time saver it would be for them to be able to type with 10 fingers, rather than with 2 pecking ones, I went on to tell them, that there was a way to measure how fast they type. Just as cars drive MPH, we can tell how fast a typer is by checking their WPM (Words per Minute). That seemed to make sense to them.

We directed them to the following Typing Test. They all chose 3 minutes and picked their own text to type from a list of 5 different ones (Wizard of Oz, a Zebra kind, Enchanged Typwtriter, etc. ) They were allowed to try it several times and note the WPM they reached each time.

On the SmartBoard we had created an Excel spreadsheet with their names and a column for their WPM score. As they finished the test, they came to the front and recorded the number in the appropriate cell using the smartboard on screen keyboard. I inserted a graphic that also showed them their score as a bar graph. It was great to see the students compare and go back to try to improve their score to see the bar rise higher.

So, technically speaking , this was a spreadsheet-data-graphing-smartboard lesson where students generated their own data by practicing their typing. I can live with that.

Each student also received a typing log, to be completed at home by practicing on any of the web based typing practice sites. Teachers will assign the appropriate amount of time they are required to practice per week as homework. We will repeat the typing test at reasonable intervals to check, record and evaluate their progress together.

An Incredible Feeling…

Have you ever had this “real” feeling that something you did had an impact on someone else? That is what we as teachers and parents live for. Right?

Well,thanks to Melanie Holtsman and her team of teachers at Chet’s Creek Elementary school, I got goosebumps, when I received the link to the following VoiceThread.

It gave me goosebumps that our story of Jose, Pachamama and the Crystal skull inspired these kids to draw such amazing illustrations and tell the story of or journey through Costa Rica and Peru. Seeing the pictures with so many details just showed me how much these students were observing and soaking in from our story, video and pictures that were posted.

Thank you Melanie and Chet’s Creek for sharing your students with me.