Week 12

The laptop cart continues to be used by Mrs. White's class as they make progress on their states brochures. Next week, Mrs. Gillespie's class will use the laptop cart to start creating Powerpoint slideshows. (Week of 4/28 and 5/1 - students not visiting computer lab due to STAR testing. Laptop cart used by Ramirez, Devore, Saldivar, Gillespie, White. Second laptop cart is up and running).

Grade 3: In the computer lab, 3rd grade students received a review lesson on proper keyboarding technique. Student spent time keying in words as they were announced. They also spent time trying to advance through the Type to Learn keyboarding software. Children who had completed at least 10 keyboarding lessons were encouraged to use the keyboard covers.

Grade 4: In observance of National Poetry Month and Earth Day, 4th grade students composed acrostic poems using the letters in the words “Earth Day”. Once the poems were composed, students created word collages from the words in their poems using a website called “wordle”. Completed poems have been uploaded to the 3rd grade drop.io website. From drop.io, poems can be downloaded and printed.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 continued to work on a project in which they are creating a brochure that ties into the required 5th grade science curriculum. Students selected their planets, researched the planet and are beginning to create their brochure in which they advertise adventure travel trips to their planets. Students are creating their brochures in Microsoft Word.

5th Dimension: 2nd and 3rd grade students in the after-school 5th Dimension program participated in a newspaper scavenger hunt this week. They were asked to find items such as a compound word, a word that has at least syllables, the names of 2 countries in Europe, the names of 2 countries in Africa along with many other items that helped to reinforce their classroom learning. Students worked as a team with their UCSD buddies and really enjoyed the game! The 4th and 5th grade students began working on a Reader’s Theatre play. Student divided into groups and decided on their parts. They also began making props. Students will work on this project for several weeks.

Week 11

The laptop cart continues to get used by Mrs. White's class as they continue their work on the states brochures. In addition, Ms. Jabbour's class has checked out several of the laptops for classroom work.

Grade 3: In the computer lab, 3rd grade students participated in a hands-on explorations of the concept of symmetry by creating beautiful symmetrical designs using the online paint program Sumo Paint (http://www.sumopaint.com/). The designs that the students made were absolutely stunning! Student designs can be viewed and downloaded from the Grade 3 computer lab dropio website.

Grade 4: 4th grade students completed their assignments in which they typed up several paragraphs related to how the wireless internet works. For this project, students brought in clip art and formatted the document to produce a professional looking document. Students were required to bold text, change fonts, center, create double spacing, right justify text, insert and resize clipart as part of the assignment. Students also learned the difference between hardware and software plus learned what a processor and RAM is.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 continued to work on a project in which they are creating a brochure that ties into the required 5th grade science curriculum. Students selected their planets, researched them and are beginning to create their brochure which advertise adventure travel trips to their planets.

5th Dimension: 4th and 5th grade students in the after-school 5th Dimension program participated in a newspaper scavenger hunt this week. They were asked to find items such as a compound word, a word that has at least syllables, the names of 4 countries in Europe, the names of 3 countries in Africa, a homophone, a homonym and many other items that helped to reinforce their classroom learning. Students worked as a team with their UCSD buddies and really enjoyed the game! The 2nd and 3rd grade students played bingo using cards that had the vocabulary words that they had learned so far this year. They also loved playing the game with help from their UCSD buddies.

Week 10

Laptop cart usage is up at our school! This week, Mrs. Saldivar’s class used 2 carts to type up their persuasive paragraphs. Mrs. White’s class used the laptops to start creating brochures on the states that they had been researching.

Grade 3: In the computer lab, 3rd grade students wrapped up the state trading card project Students researched information on their state and typed in the text for their last card. The cards turned out beautiful and can be viewed and downloaded from the Grade 3 computer lab dropio website. Students are continuing to contribute to their classroom blogs. 3rd grade blogs can be viewed at http://amazingb4.blogspot.com/, http://amazingb5.blogspot.com/, http://amazingb6.blogspot.com/, and http://amazingb7.blogspot.com/.

Grade 4: 4th grade students put the finishing touches on their explorer’s webpages. The completed webpages can be viewed at http://poster.4teachers.org/. Once at the site, scroll to the bottom of the page and search by teacher name. The teacher name is : tpeslajolla. Select the desired webpages (posters) to view by clicking on the poster number. Students spent the bulk of the 45 minute period learning about how wireless internet works. They learned about routers, they typed up several paragraphs related to the subject. Once text was typed, students brought in clip art and formatted the document to produce a professional looking document. Students were required to bold text, change fonts, center, create double spacing, right justify text, insert and resize clipart as part of the assignment.

Grade 5: Students in grade 5 began a project in which they will be creating a brochure that ties into the required 5th grade science curriculum. For the project students are researching a planet and creating a brochure to advertise an adventure travel trip to the planet.

5th Dimension: A new group of UCSD students has joined us in the lab. We played an ice breaker game so that everyone could get to know each other. After the game, 4/5 students worked on reviewing their vocabulary through a bingo game. 2/3 students continued to complete game related task cards with their new UCSD buddies.