Second Week in May

With so few school days left, we are scrambling to get every bit of learning value from our time in the lab.

The Short Story:
3rd and 4th graders are taking a 1 minute typing test so that I can gather data about their progress in Keyboarding for Kids.
Kindergarteners are choosing between drawing a picture in Drawing for Children or completing an activity at Kerpoof.
1st graders are choosing from that same set of options with the addition of the Creative Games portion of uptoten.com's Boowa and Kwala premium website.
2nd graders are visiting AuntLee.com for games that help them become more fluent with a computer keyboard.

The Short Story:
3rd and 4th graders are taking a 1 minute typing test so that I can gather data about their progress in Keyboarding for Kids. We do that at a website appropriately named TypingTest.com. Each child repeats the "Tigers in the Wild" 1 minute timed test as many times as we have time for, then I manually take down WordsPerMinute, Number of Errors, and AdjustedScore for entry into a MS Excel spreadsheet that will inform teachers so that they can include each child's progress in the discussions they will hold with parents at the end of the year. The accounts at Keyboarding for Kids will be available to students all summer long, and I HIGHLY suggest parents encourage practice. As I tell the kids, this skill is one that will make their entry into middle school immeasurably easier.

I'm so proud of the 4th grade team for all the support and encouragement they've given their classes this year. Our 4th graders' performance this year by far exceeds that of previous years and we feel like we're making progress in the program. More to come.

Kindergarteners are choosing between drawing a picture in Drawing for Children or completing an activity at Kerpoof. I save them all and I'll create a slideshow for each classroom's webpage as well as printing them for your refrigerators.

Here's one example of each platform's output. First, from Kerpoof.com's "Make a Picture" activity:

and then from Drawing for Children:

1st graders are choosing from that same set of options with the addition of the Creative Games portion of uptoten.com's Boowa and Kwala premium website.

2nd graders (who are not producing PowerPoint "About Me" slideshows in a quick intro to PowerPoint) are visiting the BBC Typing website for computer games they can revisit during the summer to help them begin to easily locate keys on the computer keyboard.

Keyboarding is an essential skill, and these students will begin their formal touch-typing program at the very beginning of the next school year as 3rd graders.

February Marches On!

Another big week in the lab, as:

Kinderkids explored lesson number 43 at UpToTen Premium@Schools, now up to 8,377 schools using it; and I have to brag again about our being school NUMERO UNO! This lesson contains four activities classified as "Advanced Mouse and Keyboard" work and the kids had great fun with them--filling a honeycomb with honey from flowers, helping a mole through a tunnel, mousing Zoombunny up into the air to collect acorns and carrots, and finally using keyboard arrows to play a very serviceable version of the old game Brickmaster called "Breaking Bricks." Click the pic above for a detailed descripton.

1st graders explored the Webliographer for resources I've stored there relating to Weather. Some particularly liked the 15 or 20 word "word searches" while others gravitated to the "Water Goes Around" construct-your-own water cycle activity.

2nd graders visited the Webliographer for Mystery links, and explored especially the Fin, Furr, and Feather Federal Bureau of Investigation.

3rd graders cracked open Timez Attack (free version) to take their little guy through a very very nice 3D environment picking up math facts along the way then demonstrating their retention of them by tossing them at a pretty scary ogre who their math releases from a secret door. When the ogre is conquered by the smarts of the player, he disappears into thin air (not "killed," I emphasize, because the next door will surely see him released again) and another door, containing another math fact, is sought. It's a fun, well conceived and expertly executed game, the free version of which (the only limitation is that there is only one environment option, and more can be purchased at the site; but I don't encourage that--to the maker's credit, new environments are not required for full functionality) is downloadable at the Webliographer's Downloads topic or by visiting the TimezAttack website. Parents, if you wonder about the value of playing games for learning, visit and view the excellent intro video at BigBrains.com.

And, ahem, speaking of games, we (4th graders and I) proceed apace into Quest Atlantis, learning more about the worlds in which we are increasingly engaged. My email 9within QA) to all of the kids this week encouraged them to seek a sense of balance by limiting game play on their own, balancing it with homework, family time, outside play, reading, and other ways to be entertained. Their enthusiasm is sooooo clearly present (I overgeneralize somewhat here--we still have some confusion and mixed reaction and we're working with that) and I'm glad for that, but the last thing anyone wants is for this engaging platform to dominate playtime inordinately. But I will argue to the wall that if there's "screentime" available and there's a choice between a DVR'd episode of iCarly or the Simpsons and Quest Atlantis and a child chooses the latter, a good choice has been made!

We're beginning to get into some missions and quests now, and in addition to the basic iBurst quest and Shardflower Social Commitments mission, the kids are unlocking some interesting things, such as fighting blights with magical critters and seeking out a playable giant piano to commit to Creativity. I'll soon have samples of writing so that you can begin to truly understand the power of this platform to motivate and inspire. I'm also beginning to take a little video of the action in the lab when the kids are all on at once. It's wild!

That's all for this week!