Free Rice

Fifth graders spent some time this week practicing vocabulary at the Free Rice website. For each correct answer to a vocabulary question, grains of rice are donated to United Nations World Food Program. By our calculations, in the few minutes they worked at the website, fifth graders donated 18,770 grains of rice. It's a nice example of people helping people via the internet.

Cyberbullying

Fifth graders have been learning what to do when they encounter communications online that make them feel uncomfortable or badly. Students discussed what cyberbullying might look or sound like at the start, then brainstormed ways to handle the situation. Here are some of their solutions:

Tell a teacher or parent. 

Put on safety chat.

Don’t respond back.

Report them to the administrator.

Ask them not to do it again.

Come back later.

Tell the principal.

Turn off chat.

Print it.

Finally, the class talked about the positive results that could occur if the situation were dealt with quickly and effectively.

As a way to represent a hypothetical situation-action-result, students used a free online educational comics generator to make a three or four frame comic. Here's one student's work.

'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!

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!

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!

Research!

Fifth graders have started a research project, with each student choosing their own topic of interest. As we work on this from week to week, we'll be reviewing all that we know about searching the internet, identifying credible resources and obeying copyright law. Watch this place for some examples of finished products!

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.

Lunar Eclipse

Fifth graders, here's the time-lapse video of the lunar eclipse that we were unable to watch in ICT class. When the photographer put these pictures in sequence, he added some music to his show to make it even more interesting.

Be sure to watch how the shadow of the sun slowly covers the face of the moon. And why do you suppose the moon appears so red at total eclipse stage?

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

The next total eclipse of the moon will be in June 2011! But you won't be able to see it from anywhere in North America. Too bad!