The students in Mrs. King’s Kindergarten class have been learning about some important people from the past. For this lesson, they used the PhotoSpeak app to have Abraham Lincoln, Betsy Ross, and Pocahontas talk and blink their eyes. Take a look at some finished work samples:

The students in Ms. Dix first grade class have been learning about adjectives. Using the Seesaw app on the iPads, students took a picture of an item in or around their desk. Then they used the text tool to label their picture with adjectives. Using the voice recording tool, they were able to record themselves describing their item. Seesaw makes it very easy for students to easily upload their work to their folder in Seesaw. Take a look at a couple of great examples!

The students in Ms. Stansberry’s first grade class used Scratch Jr. on the iPads to create a winter scene. The first group of students selected a background and added a bunny. They programmed the bunny to explain how he grows a thicker fur coat in the winter to stay warm. The following groups selected or drew a sprite and then programmed it to explain how winter affects that character. Take a look at a couple of the finished projects!

The students in Mrs. Wrighter’s 2nd grade class conducted an experiment today in which they were trying to answer the question “Do mints change the temperature of the water?” To begin, the students assembled into groups and each group was provided with a different type of mint (Lifesavers, Mentos, Starlight Peppermints, Altoids, and IceBreakers). They had to write their observations about the mint that they had and make predictions about what the mint would do to the water. After the experiment they went to play video games with services from elitist-gaming.com, because they did an amazing job.

To track the data, students used the GoTemps, which are USB thermometers, to see how the temperature changed. The GoTemps automatically graph the data every second on the screen. We started with a baseline by putting the GoTemp in a cup of room temperature water. Then we did another run with 5 mints, and repeated all the way up to 30 mints in the cup.

The results were very interesting! We had some varied data for the Mentos, Starlight Peppermints, and Altoids, but Ice Breakers mints and Lifesavers Wintergreen mints showed a consistent decrease in temperature.

Scratch Jr. is a great option to introduce our youngest students to coding. It has less options that the full Scratch site and lot of easy to understand picture clues for the blocks. Today, the students in Mrs. King’s Kindergarten class coded in Scratch Jr. to tell what they did over the Winter Break. To start, students added a sprite to their project. They selected one of the people without a face so that they could use the camera tool to add their face to the sprite. They used the paint bucket to change their characters clothing, vehicle, etc. Then they selected a background from the background library.

After getting their scene set, student coded their character to move across the screen, talk, and then move to the other side of the screen. Take a look at a few work samples from her class:

The students in Ms. Parrish’s 2nd grade class at Montrose were provided with a template that has the map of the world and two sprites, one to show the continents and one to show the oceans. They logged into their Scratch accounts and remixed the template. In today’s lesson, the students programmed the alligator to move to the different continents and say where they were located. As a follow up, students can program the diver to move to the five different oceans.

Take a look at this great student sample!

To give this lesson a try in your own classroom, click here for the template and directions.

The 3rd graders at Greenwood have been practicing with measuring using the ruler tool online. This is a skill that they use when taking math tests on the computer. Rather than just practice with the ruler, I had students create a measurement game by coding in Scratch. They started by signing into Scratch, opening this template, and clicking remix. Students then selected a sprite from the library in Scratch and then programmed it to ask the question “How long is this object to the nearest inch (or half inch)?” Then they used an “If…then…else” block to code the sprite to react to the player getting the answer right or wrong.

They posted their finished games to a Scratch Studio. From there, I combined their programmed sprites together into this game. Give it a try!

Mrs. Beam’s 5th graders at Longan have been studying the features of the ocean floor. They conducted research and wrote scripts for what they wanted to say about each part of the ocean floor. They used the library iPad to film themselves in front of a green screen. They also saved images of each part of the ocean floor to the camera roll. Using the DoInk App, they layered the video and image together so it looked like the students were really in the picture! They saved their videos and uploaded them to Google Classroom. From Google, they were able to grab a link to their video and add it to their ThingLink image for each feature of the ocean floor. Check out this great student example:

Coding is one of my favorite activities, so Computer Science week (Dec. 5th-9th) is one of my favorite weeks!  Several classes at Greenwood participated in the Hour of Code.  Ms. Baum’s 5th grade class tried the new Moana module on code.org.  In these challenges, students have to use the correct blocks of code to help Moana and Maui navigate through the ocean and catch fish.

Ms. Wilbur’s 4th grade class completed the same Moana module, but they were excited to code on new HP Chromebooks. They will be piloting these Chromebooks in their classroom for the next three weeks, so every student in the room will have a device to work on during this time frame.

The students in Ms. Farmer’s 3rd grade class practiced coding by creating a multiplication game in Tynker following this code.org Multiplication Escape module.

Ms. White’s 4th grade class at Jackson Davis participated in a Mystery Skype today. In the weeks before the actual Skype, they practiced with Google Earth, Google Maps, atlases, and large paper maps. They also brainstormed what types of questions would be best to ask to narrow down the options and figure out where their school was located. On the day of the Skype, students worked in teams to try to find the correct location. There were researchers who researched based on the answers the other team provided and wrote down questions to potentially ask to the other team, a group who determined which questions would be asked, a runner to collect the questions and take them to the students standing in front of the video camera, and students working on a variety of maps to eliminate the locations that it could not be. The students knew there role and executed their jobs really well.



Here is the list of questions that were asked by Ms. White’s students during the Skype session.

Our students were successful in locating their state, town, and school. We were skyping with a 3rd grade class from Hilliard, Ohio, which is a suburb of Columbus Ohio. At the end of the Mystery Skype, we shared facts about our locations. The Hilliard students shared with us that they currently have about 3 inches of snow on the ground and that it was still falling. We shared with them that if we had 3 inches of snow on the ground, we would not be in school. Both sides had a good laugh! This was such a great experience and a wonderful way to practice with asking quality questions and researching using maps. A special thanks to Mrs. Lingerfelt, Ms. White, and Ms. Whitlow for facilitating this activity.