Posts Tagged ‘1st grade’
We love to celebrate Dr. Seuss and thanks to our creative librarian, Mrs. Murphy, we have an event-filled week. Today was Wacky Wednesday with teachers and students joining in with some very interesting outfits!
Our first graders visited the lab today and, after reading Wacky Wednesday, used MS Paint to create a “wacky” self-portrait. The children draw their picture, print it out, and glue a picture of their face to the illustration.
For most, this was their first time to use the paint program so it took some getting used to the tools (that didn’t always do what the students wanted!). This is where our fabulous TCU students were so helpful. They came to observe technology lessons and jumped right in to help the little ones with ideas, suggestions, and guidance. Not everyone finished this week but that’s okay. We’ll complete the project next week then I’ll bind the papers together so each class will have a book of wacky self-portraits.
Pictures of Mrs. Kee’s class with their TCU visitors:
Have you ever tried to do too much in a class period and by the time class is over, you are completely worn out? That’s what happened with our first group of 1st graders. I introduced spreadsheets by having the students view a BrainPop, Jr. video on Pictographs. This is a fun introduction to picture graphs and the students always like to hear what Mobi and Annie have to say.
I thought we would have time to make two graphs so we created a tally chart on our favorite colors and our birthday months. To introduce spreadsheets for this age, we use MaxCount from Scholastic Keys; a child-friendly version of Microsoft Excel. MaxCount has several built-in activities and we started with “Counting Colors.” This is an excellent way to input data and watch the pictograph grow. In addition, the students are provided a text box where they can write their observations about the graph. Everyone printed and we moved onto “Counting Months” – similar to the previous activity but this time a bar graph is created.
The students did fabulously well considering I tried to fit too much into 40 minutes. What helped is that we had some wonderful visitors from TCU who were a huge help! It’s really nice to have extra hands in the lab.
After the 1st class left, I felt like we’d been through a whirlwind! For the next class, we omitted the “Counting Months” activity and we moved at a much more relaxed pace.
Here’s a sample graph:
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As children grow up using technology, it’s important to introduce digital literacy and citizenship early.
A few weeks ago, our first graders met the NetSmartz Webville Outlaws (Look-At-Dis Louie, Meet-Me Mack, Potty-Mouth Pete, and Wanta-Know Wally). Building on that, today we used a lesson from Common Sense Media called Going Places Safely, for grades K-2. The lesson discusses safety rules when traveling somewhere in person. The timing was perfect since the students will be taking a field trip on Friday so we talked about staying with the adults, not wandering off, talking only with people they know . . . Then we were able to relate this to taking a computer field trip. The safety rules for the lesson were:
- Always go online with an adult.
- Don’t wander off – stick with websites that an adult says are okay.
- Talk only with people you know.
For our computer field trips, we visited New York and Washington, DC. The New York sites were the New York Philharmonic Kidzone and Destination Modern Art. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park and American Museum of Natural History: Ology were the DC highlights. I gave glimpses of things to look for on each site, told the students to be sure to visit all of them, and that they would write and illustrate their favorite “field trip” from the four choices.
The children were really excited and couldn’t wait to start exploring! The webcams on the National Zoo site were a huge favorite. They loved watching the various animals and were amazed that they were seeing exactly what they would see if they were there in person.
After about 20 minutes of exploration, the students began writing about what they visited and what they saw. Then they added an illustration. Sometimes, it’s not easy to get the children off the computers but they were eager to show off their favorite “field trip.” Most drew an animal from the zoo but we had several who had discovered a painting on Destination Modern Art that they illustrated. Here’s an example of Monet’s Garden (I just love the spelling – Monays garden!).
Common Sense Media offers numerous lesson plans, complete with student handouts. I highly recommend their resources and, judging from the engagement of the students, I’d say they would second that!
We’ve been working on guiding 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders to write quality blog posts and comments and now it’s time to move on to first graders. Some of the teachers really wanted to start their students blogging because they understand the value in writing for an audience.
I started by asking if anyone knew what a blog was. As first graders do, they came up with lots of answers but really didn’t know the purpose of one. We talked about how we communicate with our friends versus how we would do so with people who lived further away. After a bit of a discussion we talked about the purpose of our blog (to help others learn new things, to share what we know and do in class).
Next I read a few pages of It Could Have Been Worse, by A.H. Benjamin. This is a cleverly written book where Mouse is returning home but runs into several situations where he is about to be caught by a cat, bird, snake, and more. Fortunately for Mouse, he manages to escape the would-be captors (although he doesn’t have a clue they are after him) but the creatures trying to catch him end up in rather humorous predicaments.
I stopped just before we discovered what would be the result of Mouse being chased by a snake. The students were asked to predict what would happen next. Without letting them give an answer, I said that they would be writing this as a comment on their blog. They were SO excited! We were fortunate to have some college students observing and they jumped right in helping the children log into the blog, guiding them to sound out words, etc.
As the comments were submitted, I approved them. When these were shown to the students, there was a lot of excitement. “Look, there’s my name!” “Oooh, I see mine too!”
After all were submitted, we finished reading the book. No one guessed what would happen to the snake and Mouse but that’s okay. They practiced predictions and writing; and enjoyed doing it!
Here’s a link to Mrs. Kee’s class blog.
I’ve had a hard time finding internet safety activities for 1st grade. I believe it’s a fine line – you don’t want to terrify the kids but you do want them to understand the how and why to keep safe. And there are some great videos available; they’re just a bit intense for the younger students.
We started with BrainPop, Jr. Internet Safety. The students always like the BrainPop movies and seem to retain what they learned. Even though it was BrainPop, Jr. I thought the material was still geared more for slightly older students.
Some of the other activities I found were:
- Meet the Web Outlaws (Netsmartz Kids)
- Bad Guy Patrol – This has 2 levels (ages 5-7 and 8-10); has audio as questions are asked and the player chooses the answer. The answer is reinforced as further explanations are given. Students receive a certificate when finished (which the students loved!).
- Name that Outlaw – this is a good reinforcement to use after introducing Netsmartz Web Outlaws
- Router’s Birthday Surprise – Also from Netsmartz, this has lots of good information in it but it’s just a bit too long to do in the lab setting.
I’d love to know about other activities that would be appropriate for 1st graders.
Our first graders visited the lab for the first time today. What a fun group but, wow, they keep us moving! In kindergarten, a student’s username was his/her first name. In 1st grade, this changes to “last name + first initial.” Oh, what chaos this causes! I carefully explained what their usernames were, how they were different from last year, and that all they had to do was to look on the back of their name cards to see what the new username was. Suddenly several hands went up. “You didn’t spell my last name right. There’s no a at the end!” For some it took quite a bit of convincing that, “Yes, everything really is okay. That letter at the end of your last name is the first letter in your first name.” Very confusing for a young first grader! But everyone was able to log on and have time to do some math activities. In a couple of weeks, they’ll be little experts!
