Students were reminded that for beginning typists, accuracy and form are much more important than speed. Students are being given regular keyboarding homework, with grading focused on practice and relative improvement rather than a words-per-minute score. Students seem highly motivated to improve their typing proficiency and enjoy the interface and self-pacing of Typing Club. As students improve their touch-typing skills, they will need to use less brain power for finding the letters so they can focus more on what they want to say.
Keyboarding instruction and practice has been an important part of the fifth-grade curriculum during the fourth bimester. After an introduction to the features of the online keyboarding program, Typing Club (asfg-mx.typingclub.com), in-class instruction stressed the importance of correct hand position and posture. Instilling good habits in students while young can help them prevent repetitive motion injuries later in life.
Students were reminded that for beginning typists, accuracy and form are much more important than speed. Students are being given regular keyboarding homework, with grading focused on practice and relative improvement rather than a words-per-minute score. Students seem highly motivated to improve their typing proficiency and enjoy the interface and self-pacing of Typing Club. As students improve their touch-typing skills, they will need to use less brain power for finding the letters so they can focus more on what they want to say.
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5th grade geografía students are using Zaption to engage with content. Zaption is an interactive video that pauses and asks questions. Students answer the question and then the video continues. The teacher dashboard of Zaption helps teachers understand student misconceptions by breaking down the results by question and providing detailed data to improve teaching and learning. The Zaption site has thousands of videos that can be used as is or re-mixed with new questions. Teachers can choose videos from YouTube or create their own too. There is even a Share to Classroom option that makes it easy to provide the resource to students. In order to help 5th grade students understand the celebration of Día de los Muertos, students watched this video. Students also reviewed important aspects of the Mexican Revolution on the 105th anniversary through another interactive video. Students enjoyed using Zaption and several re-watched the videos in order to improve their scores on the questions and reinforce their learning. 5th grade students will continue using Zaption this year.
Geopolitical team, but students draft countries to form their team. Each country has its own rank that fluctuates from day to day based on data from the New York Times and the GDELT Project. Points are given for each article in the New York Times related to a country and based on the 'Goldstein Tone' generated from the GDELT Project.
Natural disasters, war, crime, politics, business, pop culture and more can affect how a country performs. Students are engaged in learning more about current worldwide news so they can choose the best team. They can check their score and other player's scores using the Rankings pages of the Fantasy Geopolitics site. Their teacher provides the opportunity to switch, trade or dump "players" if students feel their countries are not performing well. In order to make a change to their team, students must explain and justify to their teacher why they want to make the change. What a fun way to encourage students to stay current with world events! Middle school band classes integrate technology to help students become proficient players. Students fill out a practice form at the end of each week to log which days and for how long they practice. The practice log helps them track their habits to learn more about how quickly they are progressing. In addition to regular practice, students can make appointments for private lessons or extra help using the Lesson Calendar. Currently lessons are just during recess, but as the “beginner training camp” classes with 5th grade end and students are more comfortable with their instruments, after school lessons will also be available. The band teacher provides the students their first copy of the music for class, but after that they must access the google drive folder with all of their band music and print their own. This is also a resource for advanced students to use for more challenging or extra music to practice. All of these resources help motivate and engage students to improve their instrumental skills.
With the availability of our 5th grade Android tablets, students have more responsibility and flexibility in math class. Students decide when they are able to forego the lesson of the day and work in small groups on problem solving skills. Often, this involves students needing to utilize the internet to look up formulas or unfamiliar terms. Students can do this on their own as others receive direct instruction from the teacher. This opportunity for self-directed learning engages students in math and provides incentives for students to think about their learning and progress. In order to reduce our impact on the environment, students are also able to view problems on the Android tablets instead of using paper.
advertisements reflecting the reality. In the end, students in this service learning invite you to consider that "every living thing should be treated with respect and love." Follow their learning on Twitter @4AnimalsASFG!
created a powerpoint slide with their information. Finally, students shared and presented about their wonder to the class.
We have been doing some gamification using the library computers playing different online and interactive games. Mission US has some awesome games that perfectly fit our curriculum including for Crown or Colony, Fight to Freedom, and Cheyenne Odyssey. What is gamification? A “serious game” or “applied game” is any game that the primary objective of playing is not purely for entertainment, but rather for building knowledge or a skill. Are you interested in using games to help students learn? Check out Nelson Taylor's gamification presentation on our After School Tech Training Page. In 6th Grade Social Studies, we are doing an Amazing Race around the world as we study geography, cultures and history. The students are working at their own pace to finish the activities that include tools such as Google Classroom, Google Maps Engine, Forms, Presentations, Videos, and Documents all about the different regions of the world. Using this Flipped Education Model, we are able to use more class time to work on projects while students learn the lessons at home or at their own pace.
Students created prototypes of their solutions to the problems. They presented in class by giving a speech explaining what sucks, how their solution solves the problem, what went well during the design process and what did not go as well. After all of the presentations, students reflected on the assignment to think about their successes and help Miss Natalie improve the project for next year. Students were very engaged in this project. Their problems and interests guided the process and made it relevant and meaningful. They chose how to present their results using Google Slides, Keynote, and iMovie. Above, you can see Lore and Marifer present and discuss the Perfect Locker solution. Below, you can watch HyunYoung's video about designing an app to help you choose what to wear in the morning. |
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