Grade 2K Richards Elementary School 5812 N. Santa Monica Blvd. Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin USA

Internet Projects Newsletter Exchange We exchange monthly e-mail newsletters with classes of children from different states and countries. Each newsletter covers a specific topic, such as a typical day at school, our favorite sports and games, books and authors we like, and our summer plans. This project helps us practice map skills, work on letter writing, discover how children are alike and different, use the computer and e-mail to communicate, and make new friends throughout the world. We will exchange news once each month from October to May. Our partner schools for this school year are second grade classes from: St. Julians Primary School in St. Julians , Malta Kärsta skola in Lillkyrka, Sweden St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, California Deerwood Elementary School in Kissimmee, Florida Rachel Carson Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland George H. Dunbar School in New Bedford, Massachusetts Blanchard Elementary School in Cape Girardeau, Missouri Minisink Valley Elementary School in Slate Hill, New York Austinburg Elementary School in Austinburg, Ohio Clarendon Elementary School in Clarendon , Texas Fairy Tale/Folk Tale Cyber Dictionary Rosie and Ralphie Rhino from the San Diego Zoo Signs of Autumn, Signs of Spring - Autumn Session "Oh, the Places We'll Go!" Project Postcard Geography 2001-2002 READ for 2002 The Great Skittles Challenge Goldy the Bear from the UK Frosty Readers 2002 Journey North - Tulips Signs of Autumn, Signs of Spring - Spring Session Graph Goodies World Weather Watch That's What Happens When It's Spring! Technology Our first technology project of the year was to create our own personal stationery using Print Shop in the iMac Lab. We designed our stationery with our names at the top and a row graphic at the bottom. After we printed out our stationery, our teacher had copies made so we can use our personal stationery for writing notes and letters. We are learning how to find applications on the desktop, open and close applications and documents, save documents in our own folders on the server, highlight text to change size and fonts, resize graphics to fit the page, and print our finished documents. We have started to use Reading Counts, a reading comprehension program. We read special Reading Counts books that are just right for us then sign up to take a ten question comprehension quiz on the computer. We can find Reading Counts books in the classroom, in the library, or at home. We each wrote two pieces inspired by the "Oh, the Places We'll Go" Internet project. We wrote about "Our Important Places" in the format of "The Important Book" then used KidPix Deluxe to illustrate our pieces. We also composed acrostic poems based on some of our favorite places then used pencils, crayons, colored pencils, and markers to make illustrations on tagboard. Last we scanned our drawings and saved them as GIF images to place on the web page. Our poems and illustrations are published on our class web page. We also scanned our drawings for the retelling of the tall tale of Paul Bunyan. You can see our technology work if you go to the Student Work section of the 2K page. Enjoy! We worked on the annual Family Celebration project during December. First we used an Inspiration web template to plan the important details of our family celebrations, then we created a storyboard to help plan our illustration, and finally we used KidPix to make a slide that combines all of our ideas. The slides will all be combined into a KidPix slide show which will be shown at Open House in March. Our work is also posted on the 2K page. We are using Graph Club, a math program in which we enter mathematical data and create from one to five different types of graphs. We used this program to record data from "The Great Skittles challenge". We are also learning how to use KidWorks Deluxe to write, illustrate, and publish our writing. We will be able to use this program in the iMac Lab and in the classroom. Our teacher used Kidspiration to help us organize our ideas for the November Email Newsletter Project. We also used this application to organize facts about the life of Snowflake Bentley for the Snowy Reader 2002 telecollaborative Internet project. We are learning to use this concept mapping software to plan our own writing and have worked on a biography web and a second web of our choice. Another application that is connected to our social studies curriculum is Neighborhood Map Machine. We are learning to create maps with map keys, buildings, streets, and other features. We are creating individual maps of imaginary places or places we know about. We are using TimeLiner to create timelines for the people we read about in the biographies we chose for March. You can use TimeLiner to create several different types of timelines that can be used for many different projects.

Internet work from the 1999-2000 School Year 

Internet work from the 1998-1999 School Year

Comments to Web Editor

Updated June 8, 2002

 

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