Fact Monster

Yesterday, in a review of information gathering, fourth graders used Fact Monster to review some key concepts. They wanted a link to it, so here it is.
http://www.factmonster.com/

'Tis the Season

This last week before our Christmas break, students have been busy writing labels, greetings, sentences, and paragraphs. Much of the work had to do with Christmas traditions and holiday greetings. Fourth and fifth graders drew (or stamped!) a picture in TuxPaint, took a screen shot of their artwork, and inserted it into a GoogleDoc, which they then shared electronically with a chosen member of the staff. Third and second graders constructed a short paragraph about a family tradition, then illustrated it using TuxPaint. Our youngest students, still learning about the painting program, drew a Christmas object, then used the Fill option to color it in. A quick label finished the project.

TuxPaint is a versatile, robust program which is free for most operating systems. To download it to your computer at home, click here. And don't forget to download the stamps!

Hopes & Dreams

For the past several weeks, each fourth grader has worked on a slide presentation of his or her individual hopes, goals, and dreams for this school year. Most goals are academic and involve reading, math, spelling, science, writing, or NWEA testing. Some goals involve music and recorder skills or art technique. Students formed and typed their goals into LibreOffice, then chose appropriate copyright-free pictures or clip art to complement their work. When Reflection slides are finished, these presentations will be filed in each child's digital portfolio. Nice job, 4Mc and good luck with those goals!

Summertime ICT!

Happy Summer! I hope you spend lots of time outside in the sunshine. I hope you read lots of books! And, if you want a little computer time, I hope you like the Tizmos page I made for you to use at home - and that Seed Ball game we played is on it!) Click right here to find it!

Making Art Digital

Fourth graders recently completed a piece of artwork with Mrs. Plante-Renault. Then they photographed it to make it digital. Here's Jake's excellent depiction of Fenway Park. Can you guess what will happen to it next?

Free Math Apps

Beginning today and for four days only, Everyday Mathematics® is offering free math game apps for your iPhone, an iTouch, or iPad. These games are the same as the Everyday Math online games students play on comptuers and they're electronic versions of the games each grade level plays in class. These games reinforce major concepts presented in our math program. To find the games, go to the iTunes App Store, then search for Everyday Mathematics. After April 16th, the games will go back to their original price - so get them while you can!

Iditarod 2011

image: CC-BY Frank Kovalchek

Tomorrow is the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the annual race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. The official start will come on Sunday. Before vacation, Mrs. Sawicki met with third, fourth, and fifth graders to show students the official web site for the Iditarod, to give them some background information and history about the race, and to have them choose a musher to follow. It's easy to get caught up in the race - it's full of sportsmanship, extreme weather, adverse conditions, long lonely distances between checkpoints, and lots and lots of dogs! During the ten or so days that the race traditionally runs, Mrs. Sawicki posts daily information about standings and locations on a central bulletin board in the main hallway of the school. Students can use the website to read about daily events, calculate distances, prizes, and monetary costs to the mushers, and watch interviews by mushers as they stop at checkpoints along the trail. If you'd like to keep up with the race at home, the official website is iditarod.com. It makes for great dinnertime conversation since so much happens over the course of 24 hours!

A sidenote: for the last four years, the Iditarod has been won by a Lance Mackey, a consumate musher and cancer survivor from Alaska. He's the man to beat this year - and that should make the 2011 Iditarod all the more interesting!

For the kids, here's the 2011 Iditarod's youngest musher, Cain Carter, talking about his hopes for the race.

Graphs & Charts

By polling their classmates, fourth grade students collected a small amount of data about a question of interest.  They entered the data in a simple spreadsheet, then used the application's Chart Wizard to generate different ways to visually represent it. Here's one student's data showing the least favorite video game of the kids in Mr. McCann's class.

Famous NH Fourth Graders

Mr. McCann's fourth graders made an iMovie of their recorded presentations about famous NH personalities. They took artwork they scanned previously and, through the magic of technology (actually, chroma editing software ), they inserted their digital drawings behind their digital selves.
Students made titles slides, then compressed their movies and saved them to their digital portfolios.
Way to go, 4Mc!

Scanning

Fourth graders have been scanning artwork done with Mrs. Plante-Renault for use in an ICT project. Wait til you see where it ends up!

Slide Shows

In ICT class, fourth graders chose from a selection of pictures and free music to build an online slide show at the free multimedia site Animoto. Here's an example of one showing the Inuksuks the children made in Mr. McCann's class last fall.