Friday, February 27, 2009

Read-across-america

Read
Across America

Monday,
March 2 Cook County School District 130 does not have school. In
addition, it is Read Across America Day and it is also Dr. Seuss’s
birthday.

Next week,
our principal, Mr.
Talluto, will be reading Green Eggs and Ham to the class with
the most books read over the weekend. Please have your child
participate in the Read Across America Day by reading a book. All
students were given forms to be signed by their parents. The
completed forms are due to the teachers by Tuesday, March 3.

Progress
Reports!

On
Wednesday, February 25 progress reports were given to all the
students in room 5. The students are working hard to bring up their
grades. Please remind them to turn in their “do over work”
as soon as possible.

Library
Cards!

Students
still need their Blue Island Public Library cards.As soon as the
weather breaks, we will be walking to the public library for our
research, projects, reports, and to check out books. It builds
responsibility when students have their own library cards to check
out books. They are extremely proud of themselves when they check out
books at the public library without adults.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Math and Reading Websites!

This is just a few of the websites I have seen used at Whittier School. The students and teachers seem to enjoy them.

For Balanced Literacy http://reading.ecb.org

For Math: http://www.aaamath.com

Get Smarter Math Website

http://www.getsmarter.org/index.cfm

Lessons:

Http://www.isbe.net/ils/math/capd.htm

http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/m2t2

http://standards.nctm.org/document/eexamples/index.htm

http://www.mattimath.com/

http://www.ictm.org

Open-ended Questions

http://www.wiu.edu/mathtips

http://www.pasd.wednet.edu/school/mathwasl/

http://figurethis.org

For Reading and Math

http://www.freerice.com

http://www.tlsbooks.com

Friday, February 20, 2009

TURN OFF THE ELECTRONIC DEVICES

Sleep Sleep Sleep

Students need the proper amount of sleep when facing the challenges of daily school activities. This means that they need over 8-10 hours of good restful sleep daily. Their minds cannot function clearly when they have not had enough sleep.
During the early evening, students need to cancel their activities on computers and electronic games as well as stop watching television. Their minds and bodies need rest and quietness so that they can think clearly. TURN OFF THE ELECTRONIC DEVICES can become one of the most important things that you do for your child. It does not matter how old a child/student is, what matters is getting that child/student enough sleep.
Skim over the following articles to see what experts are saying about sleep. This is nothing new. We all know the importance of sleep, but these studies are interesting.

National Sleep Foundation
Sleep Research
Importance of Sleep for School Children
Good Sound Sleep for Children
The Importance of Sleep
The Importance of Sleep The Importance of Sleep

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Voicethread Arizona

Voicethread in one minute!

Voicethread

All About Jing!

Adding visual elements to your presentations or conversations! Here is a short movie clip explaining Jing.

Screencasts

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com

During the last school year, I was able to use Screencast.com to make a presentation on "how to add blog posts to my students' blogmeister blogs." Since the Class Blogmeister website was blocked at school and we could not log in, I made a short movie clip at home to use in the classroom so that I could instruct my students on the "how tos" regarding Classblogmeister. I also made the movie clip available online by linking it to Classblogmeister. In this way, the students could find the file easily, use it at home, and made it possible for them to follow the tutorial and learn how to "log in" and "post to" their blogs. This was very successful.The movie clip was stored at www.screencast-o-matic.com.

http://www.jingproject.com/

Another useful tool:
The above link is for a free software download called Jing. Jing allows to make a screencast while recording your voice and mouse movements. This is an excellent tool to use to make tutorials. Once installed, you can work offline to make your screencasts. Your mouse movements are recorded along with your voice. The movie clips are no longer than 5 minutes.

Summary: Jing allows you to take a picture of your screen, make a video of the onscreen action including voice, and you can share your screencast on the web, through instant messaging, and email.

Here is a tutorial on how to capture an image!

Monday, February 16, 2009

ISAT Testing

ISAT Practice Websites:

http://metacat2.com/iltestlinks.html

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skills_5th_original.htm#math

http://www.boiseschools.org/schools/north/mrznorth/ISATSamplequestions.htm

http://metacat2.com/iltestlinks.html

http://www.isbe.net/assessment/isat.htm

http://www.isbe.net/assessment/htmls/sample_books_2008.htm

Select your grade level
Select your subject and begin
working

http://www.aaamath.com/

select grade level on top of the screen.

Select practice

Start practice

Practice for all Academic Areas:

www.freerice.com

Google Documents Again!

Additional information about Google Docs:

Below you will find information called "In a Nutshell" taken from the following link.

http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=37603

In a nutshell

Docs: Each doc can have a maximum size of 500K, plus up to 2MB per embedded image.

Spreadsheets: Each can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, or 100 sheets--whichever is reached first. There's no limit on rows

Presentations: Files in .ppt and .pps formats can have a maximum size of 10MB; files uploaded from the Web can be up to 2MB; emailed files can be up to 500K.

PDFs: You can store up to 10MB per PDF from your computer and 2MB from the web in your Docs list, up to 100 PDFs.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Google Documents

This is an online application where you can create word documents, spreadsheets, and slide show presentations.
In my opinion, one of the best things about this application is that it is online. You can access your documents from any computer in the world. If you can get online, then you should be able to get to your Google documents. This may not be exciting to some people. However, when teachers are working with students on many different computers, in different locations, and at different times of day, then Google Docs could become very valuable in bringing information into one location.

For example, if you are creating documents at home and at work, then you will be able to put the documents in one place for easy access. This means you can work on the same document from many different computers. I started this blog post early this morning from a computer in my classroom. Later the same day, I went into the media center to try out Google Docs. I was able to work on this document again from a different computer. Then, I went home to work on my home computer and finish this blog post.

Additional Positive Features for Google Docs!

There is an off-line download available so that you can access your files when there is no internet.
- You can, also, choose to share the documents in a
  collaborative environment or just keep them private. It is up to you and whatever you need to do!
- When you are finished creating your word processing document, you can also save it as a PDF, HTML, RTF, or Text file.
When I am finished writing this post, I will select the publish feature and publish it directly to my blog.
As I learn more about Google Docs, I will post another article to keep everyone updated. If you use Word to create documents for your job or personal business, why not try out Google Docs? If you do, please let me know what you think about it.