Category Archives: Springfield Park

Kindergarten Past & Present Pixie

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The Kindergarten students have been studying the difference between past & present, so I created this activity in Pixie where students can sort the objects into either the Past or the Present.

I would call out a topic such as Presidents, transportation, communication, cooking, etc. and they would have to find the pictures and sort them as either past or present. By going through the pictures one category at a time, we were able to discuss the difference between the past and the present for each topic. In our discussion we talked about how some items, for example the newspaper, is still available today, but that in the past they only had the newspaper, letters, word of mouth to inform them what was going on in the world. In contrast, today we have the television and internet where we can find the news very quickly. This activity was not only a great way to practice sorting, but also led to meaningful discussions on how life was in the past.

3rd Grade Tagxedo

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The third grade students in Mrs. Guigou’s room at Springfield Park had a great time turning their writing into a word cloud using a program called Tagxedo.  To save time, the students had their writing typed up in Pages and saved in their student folders.  We opened up a web page with Tagxedo and also opened up the Pages document with their writing.  The students then highlighted all of their typing from the Pages document and copied it using “Command/Apple + C.”  On the Tagxedo page, we clicked on load to enter text.  In the text box, the students used “Command/Apple + V” to paste their typing and click submit.  After their word cloud was created, they were able to select their theme, layout, font, orientation, and shape.  Since her student’s had been writing about school, she decided to use the shape of an Apple.  The more text you have, the easier it is to see the shape that is being created.  In their writing, the word school was used the most often, so it was larger than the rest of the words in the word cloud.  This is a great way to have students publish their writing.  I’ve also seen this program used when students are using the thesaurus to find synonyms for over-used words, such as fun and good.  Check it out when you get a chance–  http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html

From Tagxedo

4th Grade Studies Famous Artists

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The 4th grade students at Springfield Park Elementary have been studying famous artists in art class with Mrs. Cogbill.  She split the students into 6 different groups, and each group was assigned a different artist.  For this project she focused on Monet, Da Vinci, Seurat, Degas, O’Keefe, and Van Gogh.  The students spent one class period researching and completing this graphic organizer created in Kidspiration.

When students came back for the next lesson, they used their graphic organizer to create a Comic Life about their artist.  Mrs. Cogbill modeled how to organize the research into a Comic Life document.  She also touched on the 4th grade writing SOL’s by asking the students to insert speech/thought bubbles and text boxes that would both inform their peers about who the artist is, and also to persuade others to take a look at the art work created by this artist.  Her students really enjoyed working on this project because they were able to share their research in a creative way.

To insert pictures into Comic Life, the students practiced with working out of 2 different windows.  Mrs. Cogbill and I dropped photos and clip art into the students classroom folder on Volume 2, so students had to open this folder and drag the photos into Comic Life.  They also played with the capture feature on Comic Life and took a photo of themselves to insert into the first box on their comic.

1st Grade Fall Pixie Lesson

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The 1st Grade students have been practicing with all of the cool features in Pixie. We began with a template. The students then took their picture and put a hat on their head. Next they typed a sentence about fall and put it in a speech bubble. Last they spray painted leaves and pumpkins on their page. Some students even had time to add clip art. Great work 1st Graders!

2nd Grade Halloween Pages Activity

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Mrs. Ratchford’s class at Springfield Park learned how to create a great Pages document. First, the students visited http://www.starfall.com/n/holiday/halloween/play.htm?f. On this site, the students can select a pumpkin from the virtual pumpkin patch. Then they can select shapes for the eyes, nose, and mouth on the pumpkin. When the pumpkin is completed, it will dance in the pumpkin patch. THe 2nd grade students took a screen shot of their completed pumpkin by holding down Control + Apple + Shift+ 4. This gave them a selecting tool that allowed them to select the picture of their pumpkin and copy it. Next we opened up a blank Pages document, and held down Apple + V to paste the picture of the pumpkin at the top of the page. Then we added a text box to the document, so that the students could do some creative writing about fall, halloween, pumpkins, etc. I was pleased to see a variety of different stories and some excellent typing skills.

The students did a great job with this activity because the topic was broad and they had the option to choose what they wanted to write about, as long as they could tie it in with the pumpkin picture at the top of their page. I saw a lot of very creative stories on many different topics. We let the students type without worrying too much about editing. Now Mrs. Ratchford has a writing sample for each of her students that she can pull up during a writing conference and digitally work on editing with her students.

Kindergarten Sorting Activity Using Pixie

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The Kindergarten students in Mrs. Cummings class at Springfield Park have been learning about sorting, so I had them do several fun sorting activities using Pixie. Her boys and girls did a great job clicking and dragging the objects to sort them. The students were asked to help Johnny Appleseed sort the apples into 4 barrels.
Students must help Johnny sort the apples into the correct barrels by color. Students were also asked to sort these objects by shape. They loved using real world objects to sort. The great news is that all of the fabulous sorting activities can be found, already created, in Pixie. Simply open up Pixie and Click on Open at the top of the screen. From there, click on Activities. It will open up a variety of different subjects. The sorting activities can be found in the Math folder. Have fun sorting!!

Kindergarten Track Pad Lessons

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Over the last few weeks I have been using this great site to introduce Kindergarten students to the laptop:
http://www.poissonrouge.com/bugs/index
Here students can practice using the track pad to move the arrow and click & drag. I’ve been very impressed by the number of Kindergarten students I have seen practicing using only one hand! Way to go!!

Remember to allow your students time to continue practicing on the computers. Keep up the great work!